Odd Bits and Square Pegs: Plague Related Predictions

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Plague Related Predictions

My stepdaughter is pleased with herself for having predicted the advent of a third wave of plague related lockdowns in Paris. She's following my recipe for making predictions, stating them cautiously and without too much personal pride attached to them.

Her reasoning back when she made her prediction was twofold. First of all, she noted the repeated mention of a possible third wave of the plague in the daily propaganda. The narrative for a third lockdown was set by the usual spin doctors. Adding to this the constant need in France to suppress the yellow vest movement, it was easy to make the call for a third lockdown.

It remains to be seen if this latest wave of lockdowns will be implemented in other European countries as well. My guess is that they won't. But I was wrong about Paris, so I might be proven wrong again. Time will tell who's right. However, this has not deterred me from making a completely new prediction based on some news footage I saw yesterday, combined with some data I picked up a few months ago.

The news footage was about the greatly accelerated rollout of the vaccine here in Portugal. Thousands upon thousands of old people are being inoculated at a brisk pace, and it was clear from the images presented that they were not merely making stuff up. There were huge lines of old people, all eager to get their shot. My mother in law was clearly not the only one they called upon the other day to come over and join the party. My wife, who followed her mother up to the local health station could attest to the long lines and general upbeat mood.

The only problem in this is that if it's true what I've heard, that about 5% of all vaccine recipients develop an adverse reaction requiring medical attention, emergency care units will soon be overflowing with old people, sick and miserable from their shots.

Such an event would be hard to conceal. It may not be mentioned in the daily propaganda updates. But people talk. My wife has friends who know people who work in hospitals. My prediction is therefore that there will be a general chatter about old people, sick and miserable, being treated for adverse effects. It may even get so bad that it gets a mention on TV, a little like they now cover youth suicides and sky rocketing mental health issues among children as an unfortunate but acceptable side effect of the epic battle currently being waged against the plague.