I think I have my tactical ducks in a row now, but still missing the coup d’oeil.

The problem with a virus as an adversary is that it makes for such a fundamentally meaningless conflict, it’s hard to “do strategy” around it in a traditional sense. Like division by zero error.

FYI for those who need it. I usually call it cheap trick in my own writing. “Glance of the eye” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27œil

So much strategy depends on gaslighting an adversary and you can’t gaslight a virus. It doesn’t have a morale and psyche for you to collapse.

The simpler an adversary the better they can serve as a mirror. The simplest ones put you into conflict with yourself.

The virus as bisector, creating two kinds of humans, each the shadow of the other. Reacting to the virus in mirrored ways.

There is the effort against the virus which isn’t really a war but more like a big science project, like Apollo

Then there is the war caused by the virus among factions created by irreconcilable responses to it

I think there’s only 2 factions, currently represented by the save lives/reopen fast false dichotomy. The falseness is superficial. Sure there’s no economy to reopen really if it’s running amok. But the deeper divide is not yet clear. It is some sort of veiled eugenics debate.

An unstated position shaping the action seems to be: “most who might die are drags on progress anyway, and the few who aren’t can be considered acceptable casualties in the war to save progress.”

I think vastly more people buy the Great Culling narrative than will cop to it.

You kinda have to decide where you stand on this question before you can answer any others.

Could really use a prime radiant rn

Or at least a psychohistory Sankey diagram of the sort I’ve cartooned before to get at sentiment superstates https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/30/prolegomena-to-any-dark-age-psychohistory/

We’ve landed in a dank version of pebble in the sky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_in_the_Sky

It is the darkest Asimov novel — and his first. Basically “floor is lava” world. His lava was radioactivity rather than viruses.

Unlike newer versions of the story like Elysium or In Time, it’s not a crude rich vs poor divided world. It’s a world that has a structural hard choice built in by the environment.