This story is a bit on the nose.
Hello, Peter Ludlow here, CEO of InGen, the company behind the wildly successful dinosaur-themed amusement park, Jurassic Park. As you’re all aware, after an unprecedented storm hit the park, we lost power and the velociraptors escaped their enclosure and killed hundreds of park visitors, prompting a two-month shutdown of the park. Well, I’m pleased to announce that, even though the velociraptors are still on the loose, we will be opening Jurassic Park back up to the public!
I mean, it really hammers on the comparison. You can’t miss it. No one will accuse it of subtlety.
As some of you know, Dr. Ian Malcolm, our lead safety consultant, had recommended that we wait until the velociraptors have been located and contained before reopening the park, so he wasn’t thrilled when we told him the news. I believe his exact words were “you were so preoccupied with whether you could reopen the park, you didn’t stop to think whether you should.” Talk about a guy on a high horse.
That said, you’ll be pleased to know that, rather than double down on our containment efforts, we’ve decided to dissolve the velociraptor containment task force altogether, and focus instead on how we can get people back into the park as quickly as possible. So rather than concentrating on so-called life-saving measures like “staying in designated safe areas” or “masking your scent,” we’ll be focusing on the details that will get our customers really excited, like a wider selection of fun hats, a pterodactyl-shaped gondola ride to the top of the island, and a brand new Gordon Ramsay designed menu at the Cretaceous Cafe.
Unfortunately, I find the thought of teeny-tiny invisible viruses flourishing in almost invisible droplets of water in your breath to be far more terrifying than dog-sized reptiles with pointy sharp teeth. I’d rather the streets were overrun with Cretaceous carnivores — they’d be much more manageable, and the first people they’d eat are those assholes out protesting about stay-at-home orders.
Velociraptor-sized virus:
https://amultiverse.com/comic/2020/03/17/the-virus/
Trump/GOP have failed to do much of anything about the Covid-19 virus pandemic so far.
There were problems with testing, PPE, contact tracing etc..
Those problems were never fixed.
They will never be fixed at the federal level.
It looks like they just floundered around and then gave up.
The next thing to fail at will be the reopening of the US economy.
It’s for sure that they will fail at that.
All that is left is to see just how bad that failure will be.
Old cover from Private Eye.
Unfortunately, these velociraptors will follow you home and eat your grandmother.
The choice between getting the economy going again or human sacrifices of tens of thousands of US citizens by the Boomer Removal virus is a false one.
The real choice is;
.1. A dead economy
or
.2. A dead economy with a whole lot more dead people.
People just aren’t going to go about their normal business when hanging out at the mall might well kill them and the people they know and the families they live with.
Even the Red states that didn’t lock down were de facto locked down because people are good at assessing risks and want to keep living.
I’d be much more interested in this if we could encourage the dinosaurs to each only the right lawyers (n.b. lawyer). I propose the current AG and his sycophants for the first course at the buffet… wait, the critters deserve something much more nourishing (and less stomach-turning) than that.
“Unfortunately, I find the thought of teeny-tiny invisible viruses flourishing in almost invisible droplets of water in your breath to be far more terrifying than dog-sized reptiles with pointy sharp teeth. ”
What if people started sneezing dog-sized, invisible reptiles with pointy sharp teeth?
(I have a thing for “the worst of both worlds”. It lessens the inevitable disappointment.)
Fearmongering liberals are getting hysterical about how the Spinosaurus is this big scary monster that wants to eat you, but really it’s just a big newt and we don’t shut things down because of newts.
@8, Obligatory Monty Python:
[S]he turned me into a newt.
A newt?
I got better.
The big story here is that InGen apparently figured out how to resurrect the dead, seeing as Peter Ludlow was eaten by a T. rex in JPII….
Jurassic Park velociraptor escape: ho hum. So 20th century.
More relevant today: Dinosaurs fought against Union troops in US Civil War!!1!
this is 2020 and the level of ignorance of how life works on this planet is appalling.
It takes a story like that to express what is going on and what is being proposed .
It is biology that is the master of what happens here and how that is impacted by technology and population.
That we have to resort to a story like that to clearly illustrate it is frustrating, though the story is funny and cleaver.
That the world is full of predation and parasitism much of it invisible is not a new discovery to anyone who has a basic understanding of biology and its interactions.
the only thing I would add to the story would be that the dinosaurs have managed to hi-jack international airlines and have been disembarking in all the major capitals of the world disguised as tourists and business travelers.
uncle frogy
@ 12 unclefrogy
dinosaurs have managed to hi-jack international airlines and have been disembarking in all the major capitals of the world
David Icke has been warning us for years.
Vitamin D efficacy
Probably an important defense against the virus. Evidence? The death rate among non-whites. The darker the skin the higher the death rate. Dark skins are resistant to ultraviolet light. The source for the “vitamin”. What to do. Check with your physician and supplement D3. Nearly everyone that wears clothes is deficient. D3 is cheap and relatively safe. You could take 10,000 units daily safely.
jack16
Jack 18,
Or it could be a medical system that takes medical complaints of blacks and latinos medical complaints less seriously, same as with women. Or communities with less access for financial reasons.
@#15, robertbaden:
Probably — there’s no such thing as too much cynicism. On the other hand, vitamin D supplements are relatively cheap, basically harmless, and can be deployed immediately, and if they turn out to be merely a placebo, at least they won’t be making things actively worse like hydroxycloroquine. (And, of course, if it turns out that there is a connection, then the more people are taking it seriously Right Now the better. Even cutting the rate of serious illness by a tenth of a percent would be worth it.)
(Come to think of it, it would possibly be good if everybody were taking multivitamins anyway, since that would probably improve the average person’s general health and make them somewhat more prepared to survive an infection.)
Heh. “it would possibly be good” means the very same as “it would possibly not be good”.
Also, touting vitamin D as a disease prophylactic? Sheesh!
I realise you are an expert on everything, John, but I’m still not sure what justifies your “Sheesh”. Certainly there is currently no convincing evidence that Vitamin D levels affect Covid-19, but it is a known immune system modulator, and there is evidence from a recent meta-analysis that vitamin D supplementation provides some protection against acute respiratory tract infections.