China

There are very few painkillers left on store shelves; children’s painkillers are virtually unavailable.

and it’s all going to get dramatically worse. Although the Chinese government is not reporting the death toll from COVID after releasing the lockdown, hearses queued in front of funeral homes tell no lies.

President Xi had a terrible choice; let millions of people die, or sit still for the largest wave of civil unrest in decades. So he let the pressure off the population, and now they’re too busy getting ready for CNY and, you know, dying, possibly of variants whose existence will be as a direct result of the end of the lockdown, to give him any grief domestically.

Overseas Chinese are mailing tylenol home. China makes 40% of the world’s medicine supply. I’m sure you can see where this is going; a complete collapse of the global medical supply chain. There will be one style of hospital care for the rich and another for everyone else. COVID outbreaks in China will also slow shipping globally for everything else.

Pray you don’t get sick. This will be a hard, harsh winter, and a dubious and inauspicious spring.

Apparently Ryker ended up in hospital last week with a breathing problem; he was nebulized and went home. This was when he was with his da. Apart from being maybe 5 percent crankier than normal Katie didn’t notice that he was doing poorly, afterward, which is why I didn’t report it earlier. Scared me though!