In the last book of the New Testament, called “Revelation”, there is a chilling metaphor for the end times: “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” These are, in no particular order: famine, disease, war, and death. Death is the hooded skeleton carrying a big scythe, by the way, a common image in Medieval times due to the recurrence of deadly plagues that swept over Europe for a thousand years.
For most of my life it seemed like we’d done a good job in keeping these horsemen at bay. There were no pandemics since 1919, no big wars since 1945, and when there were famines they were localized to failed states in Africa, and we, in the rest of the world, collectively organized rescue missions. Not only that, but the twentieth century saw life expectancy increase from sixty years to eighty years in all industrialized countries. Whoa Horsemen!
But then came the twenty-first century, and almost the first thing that happened was 9/11, Al Queda’s attack on the twin towers in New York. Then the 2008 financial meltdown in America, then the 2020 Covid Pandemic, and two years later Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has turned into the largest and most destructive war since 1945, and threatens to become the first phase in world war three if Russia is not stopped.
And barely noticed in all of this is the fact that life expectancy in the United States has, for the first time in history, started to decrease. So it looks like those horsemen are back on the horizon. And I might add that Donald Trump bears an uncanny resemblance to another character in the book of revelations whose name starts with “anti” and ends with “Christ”.
It doesn’t help that Trump’s co-president, Elon Musk has just shut down U.S.A.I.D., the U.S. charity organization that is the world’s largest funder of food and medicine aid. This means that more deaths from famine, and more out of control disease outbreaks are a virtual certainty. Also occurring were deep cuts to medical research, including vaccine research and pandemic preparedness. Perhaps to top it off, were savage cuts to the program that was monitoring H5N1 infections in U.S. cattle. I guess the philosophy here is “what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
It doesn’t help either that the head of the U.S. department of Health is JFK junior, a vaccine skeptic. It’s almost like Donald Trump wants a repeat of his first administration’s disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic, only this time the human death rate from the bird flu virus could be as high as fifty percent, rather than two percent as it was for covid. And this time Public Health authorities will be banished from the scene - replaced by the free-dumb to not wear a mask, to take vitamin A and horse de-wormer instead of getting a vaccine, and to achieve herd immunity by mingling in crowds with other like-minded individuals. By the time this is over people everywhere will be glad they decided ahead of time to avoid travelling to the United States. By electing Donald Trump, Americans have inadvertently opted to join his game of Russian Roulette with their health and safety. It is not a pretty picture. But it is one that we’ve seen before and it comes with four hooded horsemen, one of whom bears a scythe. Welcome to the Apocalypse, and say hi to the four horsemen
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