"Unfinished Business"

Marshawn Lynch, one of the few heroes remaining in the United States, has a small role in the third season of Westworld. Lynch, alongside Aaron Paul and Lena Waithe, plays an app-based contract criminal.

Seattle critic Charles Mudede evaluates Lynch's performance as follows:

Now, to ask if Lynch is a good actor or not is like asking if this cloud is good at being a cloud or not, or if that stream is good at being a stream or not. Lynch can be neither bad or good at being all that he can ever be, Lynch.

The third season of Westworld premiered a month after the Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks were knocked out in the divisional round, losing at Lambeau Field to the Green Bay Packers. Marshawn Lynch returned to the Seahawks after more than a year in retirement, scoring four touchdowns in three games. Lynch's motto for his return to the NFL was "Unfinished Business."

What a perfect motto it is. For life in general. So I wouldn't forget it, I did myself a favor and purchased the Beast Mode t-shirts

Coming out of the other side of the coronavirus -- not 100% but with enough chi to finally communicate here after three weeks away -- one of the great motivations to stay alive, to not give up, was the thought that there is unfinished business.

For starters, I couldn't foist on my sisters the responsibility of shoveling up the squalor of my life: tracking down my bank and brokerage accounts, figuring out what kind of insurance I kept, disposing of my books, etc.

It must have haunted my father, who died at the end of summer in 2018. He didn't get to his unfinished business. After his death, when my sisters and I were cleaning his house, preparing to put it on the market, we would come upon these little scraps of paper that he had left, notes to himself of ideas that had to be developed and projects that need to be completed.

We glanced at them, and, then, sadly, tossed them in the trash.

Origin of the Coronavirus

I think Michael Klare is basically right here (see "What Planet are We On?") except that I'm a bit hesitant to baldly accept that the origin of the coronavirus started with bats. AIDS is supposed to have started with chimps in the Congo. I remember reading an interview with Fred Hoyle, English astrophysicist, where he speculated that AIDS was probably man-made; either that, or from outer space. Hoyle believed in panspermia, or life from outer space. Pandemics originate when the Earth passes through a cosmic cloud of dust containing the virus.

Climate Change and Pandemics

Back in 2014, the IPCC did not identify human pandemics among potential climate-induced tipping points, but it did provide plenty of evidence that climate change would increase the risk of such catastrophes. This is true for several reasons. First, warmer temperatures and more moisture are conducive to the accelerated reproduction of mosquitoes, including those carrying malaria, the zika virus, and other highly infectious diseases. Such conditions were once largely confined to the tropics, but as a result of global warming, formerly temperate areas are now experiencing more tropical conditions, resulting in the territorial expansion of mosquito breeding grounds. Accordingly, malaria and zika are on the rise in areas that never previously experienced such diseases. Similarly, dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that infects millions of people every year, is spreading especially quickly due to rising world temperatures.

Combined with mechanized agriculture and deforestation, climate change is also undermining subsistence farming and indigenous lifestyles in many parts of the world, driving millions of impoverished people to already crowded urban centers, where health facilities are often overburdened and the risk of contagion ever greater. “Virtually all the projected growth in populations will occur in urban agglomerations,” the IPCC noted then. Adequate sanitation is lacking in many of these cities, particularly in the densely populated shantytowns that often surround them. “About 150 million people currently live in cities affected by chronic water shortages, and by 2050, unless there are rapid improvements in urban environments, the number will rise to almost a billion.”

Such newly settled urban dwellers often retain strong ties to family members still in the countryside who, in turn, may come in contact with wild animals carrying deadly viruses. This appears to have been the origin of the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016, which affected tens of thousands of people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Scientists believe that the Ebola virus (like the coronavirus) originated in bats and was then transmitted to gorillas and other wild animals that coexist with people living on the fringes of tropical forests. Somehow, a human or humans contracted the disease from exposure to such creatures and then transmitted it to visitors from the city who, upon their return, infected many others.

The coronavirus appears to have had somewhat similar origins. In recent years, hundreds of millions of once impoverished rural families moved to burgeoning industrial cities in central and coastal China, including places like Wuhan. Although modern in so many respects, with its subways, skyscrapers, and superhighways, Wuhan also retained vestiges of the countryside, including markets selling wild animals still considered by some inhabitants to be normal parts of their diet. Many of those animals were trucked in from semi-rural areas hosting large numbers of bats, the apparent source of both the coronavirus and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, outbreak of 2013, which also arose in China. Scientific research suggests that breeding grounds for bats, like mosquitoes, are expanding significantly as a result of rising world temperatures.

The global coronavirus pandemic is the product of a staggering multitude of factors, including the air links connecting every corner of the planet so intimately and the failure of government officials to move swiftly enough to sever those links. But underlying all of that is the virus itself. Are we, in fact, facilitating the emergence and spread of deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus, SARS, and the coronavirus through deforestation, haphazard urbanization, and the ongoing warming of the planet? It may be too early to answer such a question unequivocally, but the evidence is growing that this is the case. If so, we had better take heed.

Lockdown Extended to Early May in Washington State

With the lockdown in Washington State extended until May 4, the longevity of the coronavirus has yet to be determined. We now know that this is at least a two-month virus. I've had those before. In the second month your mental health comes under increasing strain as you ask yourself, "Will I ever feel better?"

One thing is for sure. The longer the virus and the lockdown last, the greater the social breakdown will be.  Already, going to the grocery store has gone from a mildly pleasant chore to a toxic run of the gauntlet. People under stress tend to show their true colors. While many are gracious and decent, a lot are nasty, brutish and selfish.

The story of the Navy firing the commander of the U.S. aircraft carrier who spoke out on behalf of his sailors (see "Navy fires captain who warned of COVID-19 spread on aircraft carrier") points to the direction we are headed. The national government will take whatever steps necessary to shield itself from accountability and deny its loss of credibility.             

Unprecedented Unemployment

More than 6.6 million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, setting a grim record for the second straight week.

Added to 3.3 million claims for the week ending March 21, it means nearly 10 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in two weeks.

The speed and scale of the job losses is without precedent. Until last month, the worst week for unemployment filings was 695,000 in 1982. 

"Weekly Jobless Claims Rise to 6.6 Million: Live Business Updates," The New York Times

Even if the pandemic miraculously disappears by the end of this month, everyone will not be able to return to work. A lot of small businesses will remain shuttered. It has only been two weeks since most mandatory shelter-in-place edicts have been issued. Another four-to-eight weeks of lockdown will deliver another Great Depression. Pensions, already shaky, will disappear.

Either there is going to be a massive redistribution of wealth to cope with the crisis or we're headed for a Mad Max world.