Experts warn that hopes for a better year in 2024 are misplaced

Folks across the nation are breathing in the clean, natural air of hopeful optimism with the COVID-19 pandemic now reduced to the status of the flu or the common cold. Herd immunity has finally kicked in, and Americans are again feeling cautiously safe and optimistic about the future.

“I’m optimistic that 2024 will be better than the past few years,” Benny Johnson told reporters. “It just has to be, right? It can’t get worse than this.”

However, most analysts strongly disagree with this new positive attitude. The consensus among trendcasters is that centuries of decline for human civilization are ahead, with no possible course correction.

“The conflict in Ukraine is continuing and even showing signs of intensifying. Meanwhile, the violent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza by the Israeli military has widened into a conflict that has costly implications for global shipping routes,” Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador of the Future Institute told reporters. “The desperate financial optimism for computing businesses represents a dire overvaluation of an industry which is beginning to show signs of strain, with record layoffs for software companies in 2023. It’s only a matter of time before we see some major players go under. Another dotcom bust is on the bingo card for next year, and the second great depression to follow will ignite powder kegs on every continent.”

Dr. Troubador growled, like an animal, inspiring pangs of fear in the terrorized press corp assembled outside Lebal Drocer, Inc. “Among the most over-optimistic of all people are climate protestors who believe that there is any possible way to slow or undo changing weather patterns that are increasingly deadly to human life. The truth is that without the ever growing emissions there’s just no way to currently support the ever increasing population. By 2070, I predict there will be mosquitoes the size of pickup trucks, capable of sucking people dry through the spacesuits they’ll need to survive outdoors.” Troubador twisted the rhetorical knife with a grim half smile, adding, “Snake oil sales, however, are through the roof. Remember folks, TerrorMax is the one and only FDA-free drug manufactured, packaged, and shipped by drone from international waters that also fully treats the terror of historic forces beyond your control. Take TerrorMax now. Don’t settle for that ol’ wives’ tale that booze and dope is enough when you have thousands of dial-a-yield doomsday weapons in the death grips of absolute madmen. Take matters into your own hands.”