Tuesday 23 July 2019

How This Plague Scenario Would Play Out in California

Well, this is my scenario and just explains the landscape of how the plague would arrive, and how things would work.

At some point, a guy will show up with various symptoms, and the free-clinic doctor will spend three weeks working with the guy, and he is continuing to advance....no matter what the doctor prescribes.  So he finally does the plague test, and is shocked....full-up plague, and advancing to the black skin stage.

So the doctor starts to look at the tent-camp that this is from.  Over forty people are showing some symptoms....masked mostly by alcoholism and heavy drug use (meth, cocaine, and heroin). 

The county health department is concerned and talking to the mayor, but no one wants to overreact.

The first guy is put into a light-quarantine facility, while the doctor is trying to convince the other forty to come in for tests.  No of this is working well, with no saying anything to the news media.

Then you get some local kid (resident, not a tent dweller) who comes down with the plague.  Parents ask questions and some nurse admits the plague discussion.

Within four nights, a group of concerned citizens burn down the tent community. 

The doctor and the health department now have a problem because the forty infected folks have now run off.  The mayor has a problem because the cops aren't reacting to the burn-down episode. 

The Governor now steps into this and suggests a quarantine program but doesn't seem capable of mastering the requirement or having judges issue orders.

Trump steps in.....orders federal law enforcement and federal rules into the mess.  A judge stands there with the cops and the health department....every single plague person is ordered to a 30-day quarantine program.

Problems now?  Well.....these tent folks are all alcoholics and drug consumers.  They can't cooperate with any of these rules or orders.

A 300-man National Guard team arrives and sets up a camp.

But now folks are worried about the plague over the whole state.  More camps are burned.   Suddenly, you have 10,000 folks heading north, toward San Francisco.  Fear pops up, and more tent communities are burned to the ground. 

Leadership shown by the state?  Marginal and lousy.  A year into this, more than 2,000 individuals have been identified as having the plague. 

The Debate Over the Minimum Wage

The idea of one single national minimum wage, and failing to account for fifty different state variations, and probably over 300 urbanized area variations?  That's what makes the minimum wage discussion a wasted effort.

There's no doubt that a Burger King in Queens, NY and a Burger King in Demopolis, Alabama....simply aren't of the same variety.  One probably should have a set minimum wage of $8 to $8.50 an hour (starting pay).  The other probably should have a set minimum wage of $15 to $18 an hour (starting pay).

So this whole discussion is a wasted effort?  More or less.

It's like talking over minimum wage for Miami, and then talking about a small rural community sixty miles north of Miami....the wages simply can't be the same.  Yet no one will stand there and admit this in public.