A little more than twenty years ago, David Brin wrote a book entitled The Transparent Society, which, interestingly enough, suggested that the best way to fight the misuse of information technology was not to restrict information but to make it more widely available.

Since the book was published, between the growth of surveillance systems, the near-ubiquity of camera cell phones, and the spread of social media and the internet, it’s getting more and more difficult for most of us to hide anything [except financial shenanigans governed by algorithms, but that’s another story].

One of the reasons the Black Lives Matter movement has gained support is that people with cell phones and non-police surveillance systems have documented too many police abuses of power and spread them across the internet. Although those in the minority communities have known and complained about such behavior for decades, if not centuries, now that such events have been captured in living [and often dying] color, it becomes harder and harder for the law enforcement community to ignore or brush off those complaints about brutality and excessive force.

On a related front, while the Me Too movement was actually founded in 2006 as an effort to combat sexual harassment and abuse of women, it took off virally in social media after the exposure of the widespread sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in early October 2017. Here, too, the use of the internet has uncovered more than a few cases of gender harassment and sexual abuse, mainly of women, but also of men, and those of other sexual/gender orientations.

With the continuing expansion and accessibility of personal communications, this trend of what could be called “guerilla openness” is not only going to continue, but will likely expand, although more restrictive regimes, such as China, will definitely try to repress it.

Here in the United States, however, socially enforced openness is here to stay, and like most technological tools, it has its upsides and downsides. The downside is that false news, incorrect or inaccurate information can easily be spread and can destroy the reputation and sometimes the lives of innocents. The upside is that institutional and personal abuse and wrong-doing are harder and harder to conceal.

All of which brings up questions. What don’t corrupt cops get? With cell phone cameras possibly everywhere, and the increasing requirements for bodycams, just how long do they think they can continue to get away with brutality and abuse? The same questions apply to sexual harassers and abusers, particularly those in high places.

Because in a world where information – accurate and inaccurate – flows everywhere, before long there may not be that many places to hide… for better and worse.

In person and with your own eyes, it doesn’t exist. From where I sit in the semi-rural, very arid, mountain west, that seems to be the prevalent attitude about Covid-19…and more than a few other matters.

There’s no need for masks, unless maybe you’re old and decrepit, and social distancing? What’s that? No need of that any more, is there?

For most of the current Covid-19 pandemic, we haven’t seen many cases. Most people here don’t even know someone who’s had it. But now Covid-19 is beginning to creep, and even leap, into southwestern Utah. But I don’t see many masks, or much social distancing.

I do happen to wear a mask when I go out, and gloves. As a former Navy pilot, my feelings tell me nothing’s going to happen to me if I don’t, but I’m intelligent enough to know that sometimes feelings are wrong. That’s why I wear a mask, one with filters in it. In ninety degree heat, it’s not particularly comfortable, either.

In the statistical world, there’s a term that very much applies to Covid-19, and that term is “low probability, high impact.” It applies very much to the current coronavirus. Most healthy people without comorbidities won’t suffer much if they get Covid-19, but that’s far from absolute. But if you happen to draw the short straw… Death is definitely a high impact effect, even if it’s low probability for those under thirty.

Recent studies show that 4% of adults in their 20s who get Covid-19 will require hospitalization. That’s four out of a hundred, and that hospitalization will likely last weeks, and it will be expensive. Now, four out of a hundred doesn’t sound too bad, but, in California over 40% of the new cases are young adults, and as I write this, yesterday California had almost 6,500 new cases, of which 260 young adults will likely require hospitalization, and three will likely die. Those numbers are just for one day, and since hospitalization lasts several weeks, if those numbers continue, just the young adults will require another 4,000 beds, more if their hospitalization lasts more than two weeks.

In some southern states, over half of all new cases are people under 30, and those are just the diagnosed cases.

And, unfortunately, death from Covid-19 isn’t so low a probability for older Americans. More than 80% of Covid-19 deaths have occurred in people over 65, and most of those cases originated through infection from much younger people.

Besides the fact that not taking precautions (like wearing a mask, handwashing, and social distancing) could literally result in the death of more vulnerable others, it could also have a rather negative effect on younger, supposedly more resistant people. That’s because the other 20% of deaths have been adults between 18 and 64, and those deaths are roughly spread evenly across ages.

Most people wear seatbelts because automobile accidents are another variety of low probability/high impact personal disaster, and that disaster can also affect others, just like Covid-19. Only self-centered idiots refuse to use seatbelts.

The same can be said of those who refuse to wear masks in public spaces.

I’ve seen and heard those words too many times in my life, most recently from a university president explaining why he was choosing to endanger faculty and students by deciding to have an in-person commencement in a month and to open classes in two, despite being in a state where the numbers of new coronavirus cases are at an all-time high and seem likely to go higher.

In a general sense, those words are accurate. If an institution, group, or country faces a problem, it’s likely to affect all those in whatever group is being addressed either directly or indirectly. I’ll grant that.

But what such rhetoric ignores or talks past is that, more often than not, the problem affects those whom the speaker addresses far more than it does the speaker. In the instance above, the university president faces a far smaller risk from Covid-19 than do the professors, instructors, and staff dealing with students. And in terms of age and medical conditions, the faculty and staff face a greater risk than do the students.

If a general or admiral says words like those about a coming military action, they’re unlikely to be the ones wounded or dying. The president of a large public company faced with hard times and possibly failing will certainly come out of a failure better than the vast majority of his employees, and if he turns the company around, he’ll definitely fare better than his employees.

I’ve seldom heard those words from really good leaders, and then usually when that leader was actually in a position similar to those he addressed, but more than a few times from those whose leadership is suspect. Maybe that’s just my experience, but I’ve been in more sectors of the economy, including business, government, and the military, and seen more geographically than most people.

To me, the phrase “We’re all in this together” is all too often an attempt to suggest that everyone shares the burden and the risk equally, to which I’d say in the words of another hackneyed phrase, “Tell me it ain’t so, Joe.”

Every time I finish a book, or get near to doing so, or sometimes even sooner, a question comes to mind. “What are you going to write next?”

Sometimes, the answer is obvious. If I’ve just finished the first book of a series or sub-series, the answer to that question is obvious – the next book about those characters. Or it’s an idea I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and finally can’t ignore. Sometimes, the answer is anything but obvious.

Many of my readers, however, do have an “obvious” answer to that question. They want another book about their favorite character or characters. Another obvious answer for some of those at my publisher [thankfully, not my editor] is more of whatever series sells well.

But, whatever the book I decide to write, and, for whatever reason, that means other books don’t get written. Sometimes, even with a character I love and the readers love, there isn’t a good enough story there, as in the case of Charyn from Endgames, who has managed to put himself in a position that any real challenge to him would have to be so contrived as to be unbelievable in terms of the world he lives in (and no, I’m not going to twist the world out of shape to drag out another story for even the best of characters). Other times, an idea strikes me, but upon investigation, isn’t going to be believable and workable, even on its own terms.

Then, there are the characters and ideas that would result in good or excellent books, but which would require more than a single book to do well… and, if I’m in the middle of another series, they just don’t get my attention, although, at times, they do eventually get written. I had Saryn’s story [Arms-Commander] in mind for years before I wrote it. Even though I’ve written, on average, slightly more than two books a year over the past 30 thirty years, there will always be more characters and stories than I’ll ever be able to write… and most of those won’t get written.

But I’ll write as many as I can, so long as I can do it well, and my editor and publisher agree.

As I write this, the numbers of new coronavirus cases are approaching a new peak in the United States. How exactly did we go from declining numbers to what appears will be new highs in a handful of weeks?

Citing a slogan from another time and another context, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Almost everything in our economy is designed for the short-run. Profits are tabulated quarterly, if not weekly. Companies maintain little inventory, partly because inventory not sold by year-end is considered taxable income, and rely on just-in-time deliveries. Retailers and service industries have high percentages of employees working variable hours depending on demand, and more “professional” services are being outsourced.

According to numerous studies over the last several years, 75-80% of U.S. workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and 40% of all Americans can’t pay an unexpected expense of $400 without selling something or going into debt. Add to that the fact that roughly 60% of healthcare insurance is paid by employers.

So what happened when the U.S. shut down much of the economy to keep the coronavirus from spreading?

Unemployment jumped to the 13%-14% level, and government had to create massive amounts of money for unemployment, stimulus, payroll protection, and other worker and business support programs… and the funds supporting those programs are running out. State budgets are being savaged by lack of revenue and ongoing expenses, and, unlike the federal government, states can’t run long-term deficits or print money.

Over the past century, the U.S. economy has become, like business, a just-in-time operation, and with already massive government deficits…there’s just not enough money in the coffers of either governments or businesses to keep paying workers and the other bills. Almost all workers have no cash reserves to speak of, and many are already desperate. Tens of thousands of businesses will close… and stay closed… as a result of the shutdown.

So… there’s enormous economic and political pressure to “re-open” the economy, despite the fact that models show doing so will result in more than 60,000 additional deaths.

No choice is good in this situation, but the dollar cost or death toll cost wouldn’t be nearly so high if the U.S. weren’t so deeply tied to a short-term profit-maximizing just-in-time economy.

This situation reminds me, bizarrely, of an old time commercial for automotive oil filters where a mechanic explains that without good oil filters and maintenance, car engines fail. Then he says, “You can pay me now… or pay me later [to rebuild your engine].”

We haven’t even begun the long process of paying for an underfunded, over-leveraged, just-in-time economy… and we’ll be paying in both dollars and deaths, most likely for several generations.