Thusly demonstrated in the same story are the two meanings of the word "sick".
However, I don't really find any of this surprising anymore. We have been gambling ourselves into extinction for years.
Allow me to demonstrate the thought process using a gambling analogy, which seems appropriate given the story above".
It is a bit like a penny falls machine. More and more gets piled into
the system and all the while the pile 
(in this case it is a pile of toxic sh*t and
not money) gets bigger. However, the coins do not fall immediately. Each
little nudge moves something into another space where it wouldn't have
settled without the disruption, and with next coin everything is
disrupted a little more and so on.
Eventually, the pressure gets so cramped that some things just have to fall and you get a pay-off except that this time when the pay-off comes, it won't be good for anybody.
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