The Date: Sometime in the Next 5 years.
We now take you into the very bowels of the Whitehouse’s command center, located 3 stories below ground, where an emergency meeting of the President (POTUS), his National Security Director (NSD), the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), and two leading virologists, Dr. Payne and Dr. Goodman are meeting. The subject at hand, a potential pandemic.
NSD: Mr. President, I’ll allow Dr. Payne to go first. Please proceed.
Dr. Payne: Mr. President, I along with many of my colleagues, are convinced this virus will mutate within the next year, and spread rapidly around the globe. We have no reason to believe than mankind will have any immunity, and we fully expect the CFR to run between 50% and 80%. In our view, when this happens, somewhere in the vicinity of 3 to 5 billion people will perish from the disease, and from collateral damage.
POTUS: Good God! We need to warn our people now!
NSD: Mr. President, before we take that step, perhaps you should hear from Dr. Goodman.
Dr. Goodman: Mr. President, I represent a group of notable scientists that take serious issues with Dr. Payne’s predictions. We view the odds of this virus mutating to be very small, perhaps less than 10%. And we also feel the lethality of the virus will be greatly diminished if it does mutate.
POTUS: Wait, you’re telling me it probably won’t happen. Dr. Payne, what is your estimate on whether this will happen?
Dr. Payne: It is only a guess, of course. But I believe there is a better than 50/50 chance that it will happen.
POTUS: So, you are telling me that it could be devastating, or it might not be terrible at all?
NSD: That’s about the size of it, Mr. President. This could either be the worst disaster to befall mankind in memory, or it may not happen at all.
POTUS: Then what do we tell the people?
NSD: Nothing, Mr. President.
POTUS: Nothing?
NSD: Absolutely. This is an event we cannot prepare for. If it happens, it will have the same effect on our populations, our infrastructures, and our economies that a killer asteroid strike or a nuclear war would generate. Prepping for 3 months, or 6 months, or even a year would likely do little to mitigate its effects. In the meantime, if word of this gets out, there will be anarchy.
POTUS: But we can’t simply allow people to go blindly forth, not knowing it could happen.
NSD: Think, Mr. President. What would happen if we announced this to the world. There would be an immediate panic. Runs on every bank. Food shelves stripped bare overnight. Riots in the streets. Economic and societal collapse. By telling the world, we would visit upon our people the exact same crisis that we hope to avoid. Millions could die in a scramble for food, water, and medicines. You’d have to declare martial law, now, and keep troops in our cities for the foreseeable future.
POTUS: Is it even possible to declare martial law and control our cities if we made such an announcement?
SECDEF: Mr. President, our resources are already stretched thin. We have commitments in the mid-east, South Korea, and Europe. We’d either have to close all of our embassies overseas, or heavily fortify them. National Guard troops could be called in, but logistically speaking, the best we could field would be 50,000 to 100,000 troops, across the country. We’d have to concentrate on the 100 biggest cities, to have any impact at all. Personally, I think we’d have to devote a great deal of manpower to securing our borders.
More worrisome than our own population, are what happens overseas. This could ignite geopolitical maneuvering by North Korea, Iran might move on Iraq, India and Pakistan, Hell… China might decide to move on Taiwan. This could incite nations to begin using their nuclear options. If the world believed the end was near, no telling what would happen.
POTUS: But telling our people now would at least give some people a chance to survive.
NSD: Perhaps, a few. But the vast majority of people would not. The richest, and most powerful would perhaps be able to create safe havens, but even they are unlikely to be able to prepare for an event of this magnitude. And remember, IT MAY NOT HAPPEN. We may avoid this doomsday scenario if Dr. Goodman’s assumptions are correct.
POTUS: It’s a terrible gamble.
NSD: Yes it is, Mr. President. But one we must take. If this pandemic happens, all the preps in the world will not save us. Not enough to matter, anyway. Life as we know it, civilization, will likely cease to exist. We would enter a prolonged dark age. Very few would survive. There is no upside to warning the people. All it will do is create a panic, one that would cost lives, and wreck the world’s economy.
We need to keep quiet on this. Downplay it at every turn. Hope and pray it doesn’t happen. Even Dr. Payne admits that the odds it won’t happen are just as good as that it will. We have to accept that as our only hope.
POTUS: Dr. Goodman, what is your recommendation?
Dr. Goodman: I believe it is totally irresponsible to panic the world over an event that is unlikely to reach fruition. Your NSD is correct. The effects of this sort of announcement would elicit immediate panic. The downsides far exceed any benefits. Why, this could set off a chain of events as horrible as a pandemic. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with telling people we might see a minor event, and to prepare for a couple of weeks, but to go beyond that would be unconscionable.
POTUS: Dr. Payne, what is your assessment?
Dr. Payne: Once again, I must disagree with my esteemed colleague. While the odds of survival are slim, you have a duty to tell the American people what is to come, regardless of the fallout from such an announcement.
NSD: Mr. President . . . it’s your decision . . .
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So I leave it to you, the good folks who are reading this, to decide what the right course of action would be. If you were the President, faced with this dilemma, what would you do?
Tell the world, and risk anarchy, perhaps even nuclear war, when even the most pessimistic prediction is of a 50/50 chance of a pandemic. Or downplay the possibility and pray it doesn’t happen.
No easy decisions here.
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