Yangtze Plague

Tuesday November 6th 2035

Tough few weeks. Another pandemic is spreading, not as fast as Covid 15 years ago because people travel less and international trade has slowed so much, but it is more lethal, killing one in five of those who are infected against Covid’s one in 50. Symptoms seem to vary but generally victims have a very high fever and struggle to breathe. I can only guess why mortality is so high. Maybe because so many cannot afford vaccines now, even here in Wales where it has been a priority to retain as much of the National Health Service as possible after the UK government privatised it six years ago. It’s all gone the way of dentistry – a public hospital will remove a tooth that has decayed but a private dentist will try to preserve or replace it, for a price of course.

The Three Gorges Dam, as it was earlier this century.

I digress. The new pandemic seems to have spread from China – again – where the Communist Party is still in control although it practises the opposite of communism as I understand it, which should be co-operative and harmonious, but instead it is a Stalinist dictatorship over the proletariat, a dismissive term lumping individuals into a class. Stalin’s name is retreating into history, just like Hitler’s, and happily Putin’s too. China’s President Liu tries to keep an iron grip on power but escalating crises make it impossible and the nation is unravelling at the edges. There are more than 2.5 million in the standing armed forces, I heard, plus nearly a million in paramilitary branches and vast numbers of reservists, but it is a struggle to keep them all paid and fed. It could be that the new virus, which we just call the Yangtze Plague, came from the collapsing natural environments along the hugely heightened river – up to 175 metres deep – stretching from the Three Gorges Dam 410 miles inland to Chongqing and crossing geological fault lines. The dam is still standing, because of monumental efforts to clear the sediments that rise up against its back wall, and also to patch up the structure which has been buffeted now for nearly 30 years. What’s the life expectancy of a major dam? It used to be thought of as 50 to 100 years, but that was before the extra stresses and strains from global warming. I don’t know how engineers would go about decommissioning a dam like Three Gorges (pictured). I guess it would have to be done very slowly, to avoid tragic drownings and the destruction of communities? But I don’t know.

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