Apr 06 2020
This is the first in series of articles about man-programmed, natural and mythic disasters! Some of us are old enough to remember Y2000 problem. I will explain for those who do not: the issue was in the way a year was coded into a computer operating system: instead of proper 4 DIGIT year (XX99), a 2 DIGIT (99) format was used, hence at the year 2000, 99 would become 00 and therefore indistinguishable (for a computer) from 1900, 1800, 1700, and so on… one disaster every hundred years … just like epidemics: Spanish Flu in 1918 = COVID-19 are almost exactly 100 years apart!
To make sure, the dominant operating system back then was and …. is MS-DOS - now beefed up and improved Windows 10+. Do you really believe that, arguably, one of the smartest and, definitely, the richest people in the World - Mr. Bill Gates, sincerely did not foresee the problem in 1981 - 19 years prior to Y2000 when he worked with IBM to improve DOS (Disk Operating System)?
All right, I am ready to accept that, even for Mr. Gates, it was difficult to phantom the success he will have just a few years later and, therefore, “what the heck” mentality prevailed.
Microsoft went public in 1986 making Mr. Gates one of the wealthiest people on Earth: he has been on FORBES list since 1987: Living Happily Ever After! (sounds like “laughter” to me! He was laughing all the way to the bank!). Truly, the Last who Laughs - Laughs last!. Mr. Gates is still trading places with the only surviving true competitor - Mr. Bezos of Amazon.
Here is my question: did Mr. Gates really think in 1986 that Y2000 was tooooo… far way? I must assume “YESSSS….” or accept the fact he is the last damn imbecile who won lottery, because even Windows 98 was not ready for Y2000. Then, there was a frenzy to upgrade to make sure our lives do not crash at midnight on December 31st of 1999. I remember coughing up around $100 for every computer I had. It was not a big deal to me even back then but, $100 x 168.6 million personal computers in use made Microsoft even more valuable: to a tune of $16.86 BILLION dollars in sales.
Of note, “a white knight of the computer business” - late Mr. Steve Jobs - accounted for this vulnerability. Even the oldest Macs could deal with dates from January 1, 1904, through February 6, 2040, so there was no fundamental Y2000 disaster lurking inside your Macintosh. And as for the year 2040, there's an interesting explanation behind Apple's odd expiration date. The original Mac development team chose midnight, January 1, 1904, as the start of the Mac calendar in part because it was mathematically convenient to have a calendar system start on a leap year, which 1900 was not!
It is too long to explain, but a century year cannot be a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years.
Leaping forward: what does this have to do with pandemics? Well, Mr. Gates was definitely aware of upcoming pandemics. Refer to prior posts Bill the Prophet? and Bill the Informed! . As of 2018, Mr. and Mrs. Gates donated $36 billon to their foundation. He pledged >$1 billion to the fight against malaria and, most recently, $10 billion to fight “coronavirus”. Does he have anything to show for this outstanding effort? NO!
My contrarian - Dr. Why’s question: what does Mr Gates have to show for all this effort? The short answer is nothing … other than a tax deduction.
The morals of the story or, more accurately, questions of the story:
Is this an aggravated case of Sisyphis’ labor whom Zeus made roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill? or,
One of the 12 labors of Heracles?
The slaying of the Nemean lion, whose skin he thereafter wore - a virus is not exactly a lion, but just as sneaky;
The slaying of the nine-headed Hydra of Lerna - a vaccine against 9 viruses - GARDASIL-9?
The capture of the elusive hind (or stag) of Arcadia - an elusive - female deer with male like antlers - coronas?
The capture of the wild boar of Mount Erymanthus - multiple waives of pandemic, like a wild boar who came crashing down from his lair on the mountain, attacking men and animals all over the countryside, gouging them with its tusks, and destroying everything in its path;
The cleansing, in a single day, of the cattle stables of King Augeas of Elis - may be not in a single day, but our Heracles cleanses the planet from epidemics;
The shooting of the monstrous man-eating birds of the Stymphalian marshes - the viruses at war;
The capture of the mad bull that terrorized the island of Crete - the capture of the SARS-CoV-2;
The capture of the man-eating mares (viruses or “flesh eating bacteria”) of King Diomedes of the Bistones;
The taking of the girdle of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons - deciphering viral genome;
The seizing of the cattle of the three-bodied giant Geryon - getting control of multiple viral strains;
The bringing back of the golden apples kept at the world’s end by the Hesperides - Poor Hercules aka. Mr. Gates could not get it; and
The fetching up from the underworld of the triple-headed dog Cerberus, guardian of its gates - organizing immune response!