by Phil Erwin
I am frankly astonished at just how much mental, emotional and political energy has been “invested” (read: vented) in the question of how to identify this new, serious pathogen.
“Coronavirus” is a generic name for a class of viruses that are involved in infecting humans (and other animals) with what we call (again, generically) “flu” or “the common cold.”
We’re familiar with these diseases, they’re a part of our yearly (not daily) life, so they don’t scare us much. Maybe they should – it’s a fact that flu viruses kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, but we don’t seem too panicked about that. Should we be? Not really. Most of those deaths are due to other, underlying health problems that make small segments of our population more susceptible to catching, and then to dying from, viruses that make the rest of us no worse than uncomfortably sick.
And that is true of this new virus, as well. Many thousands have died in China and elsewhere on the globe, but it appears that most of these deaths are what we might call “health-compromised seniors” – elderly people with underlying conditions such as emphysema or diabetes that make them much less capable of fighting off disease – especially this one, which can very rapidly lead to serious pneumonia.
But for most of us, it appears we either won’t know we’ve been exposed, or may get symptoms not more worse than a fever and some coughing.
So what’s all the fuss about?
Why are we so disrupting our nation’s social life, to the point where we’re basically driving ourselves into recession almost overnight? I mean, we’ve canceled all our big sports events – it doesn’t get any more serious than that, right? Disneyland’s closed, fer cryin’ out loud! OMG, no March Madness! Life as we know it is coming to an end!
Right?
No. It’s not.
What we are doing has now been termed, “social distancing.” It’s a form of national quarantining, where we can leave our houses, move around, do a little shopping, but avoid gathering together in big crowds wherein a few unknowingly-infected individuals (or a couple of mean-spirited bio-terrorists) can infect hundreds of people at once. That is what travel bans, concert cancellations, school closures and no-audience talk shows are intended to avoid.
So what do we do? We panic, run screaming down to the local store, and stand in lines where everybody is upset, angry, worried, and therefore huffing and puffing and bumping elbows. All to buy toilet paper. For a disease that, for most of us, will likely require nothing more than a box of tissues and a few aspirin to keep the fever down.
Not exactly our finest public hour.
Meantime, our “news” media, chartered with the responsibility of keeping us actually informed, are instead spending their news cycles on such unbelievably irrelevant details as whether to call the virus “Chinese”!
Seriously?
Yup. The talking heads, “reporters,” hosts and their politician guests were all spending their on-camera time screaming that Trump and team calling this pathogen the “Chinese coronavirus” or the “Wuhan flu” – or even just labeling it as “foreign” – was absolute proof that these folks are “racists” and “xenophobes!” Hell, they might even be racist xenophobes!
Let me just say that this is the most idiotic, imbecilic, foolishly dumb-ass load of epithet-earning crap I have ever heard bouncing around unchecked in that thought-killing, soul-bereft echo chamber erroneously called the mainstream “news” Media.”
Why do I say that, you ask?
Because viral diseases are always, always colloquially named/identified by the locale in which they are first recognized.
Wuhan, China. Wuhan flu. Chinese coronavirus. Get it?
And that is why, in the Chinese news and science papers, the virus was being called the “Wuhan coronavirus” back in December. I repeat: In the Chinese media!
Which is also why our own news media were calling it the “Wuhan flu” and the “Chinese coronavirus” in late December and January.
Because that’s what it was! And is!
Don’t believe me? Check out this video montage of the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC and elsewhere freely associating “China” or “Chinese” with “coronavirus” on camera before it turned into an anti-Trump racism dogwhistle:
And here’s the nation’s “premier” newspaper blessing the Chinese connection in January:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world/asia/coronavirus-japan-china.html
But now the very same media outlets and talking heads are all screaming Racist! Xenophobe! and pointing to the Trump administration’s use of those terms as proof! They’re all racists! Disciples of Stephen Miller (who’s been tagged with the Racist!! label for years, for reasons I’ve never been able to divine. Maybe he talked with Breitbart once or twice. Doesn’t matter. Once the label is slapped on you, the Why of it becomes irrelevant. Which, of course, is the reason for wielding the label in the first place.)
If the news “experts,” the reporters and show hosts and politicians you are used to trusting for the truth were calling this pandemic a “Chinese virus” in January and are now saying anyone making that connection is “racist” in March, you have your undeniable proof: They are hypocrites and liars, not trying to deliver the truth, but rather trying to create the “Truth.” They don’t want to “inform” you. They want to fool you into believing what they want you to believe. That is called propaganda.
And that is precisely what our national “mainstream Media” has truly become: The propaganda Media. (CNN has been semi-seriously re-cast as the “Clinton News Network. Hannity now refers to MSNBC as “MSDNC.” Quite an accurate change.)
If you’re still listening/reading/paying attention to them, you should stop. You are swallowing poisonous ideas in the guise of “news.”
Shift your attentions to outlets where the Truth is actually the target – not a public too ill-informed to recognize it.
If you’re afraid of FOX and FOX Business (and many Democrats have been propagandized to the point where they actually are), try OANN, the One America News Network. Their news is straight. Their investigative reporting is absolutely top-flight. Their evening opinion shows are insightful, reasonable, informative, with excellent, thoughtful interviews. If you’re a Liberal, you may rankle at some of the opinions, but you will learn a lot, and you may find yourself gradually molting from “blinded ideologue ” to “well-informed, reasonable Liberal.”
Wouldn’t that be better?
Phil Erwin is an author, IT administrator and registered Independent living in Newbury Park. He would like to support some Democrat ideals, but he has a visceral hatred for Lies and Damn Lies (and is highly suspicious of Statistics.) That pretty much eliminates supporting most Democrats, and a bunch of Republicans to boot.
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Bravo! You not only told it true, but gave people another place to get “real” news. Well said.
But I wish to add that the major “entertainment news” is whipping our citizens into a frenzy! They seem to enjoy scaring the bejabbers out of anyone watching instead of telling us to remain calm, don’t hoard because there is plenty of supplies to go around.
And for Heaven’s sake! Use common sense when in public.
Your article is spot-on. As if America wasn’t tired of the nonsensical Russia hoax and impeachment farce, the MSM now is politicizing a national emergency. I have gone as far as to tell people that if they are getting their news from CNN or MSNBC that they are not ill-informed, they are misinformed. It seems that hyperbole is the order of the day, and outright falsehoods are perfectly acceptable on those networks as long as it casts aspersions on President Trump.
As far as the virus goes, I went to a grocery store only to find shelves nearly empty. I wondered if I had somehow missed a major earthquake or nuclear attack but no, it’s just people acting irrational, or to coin a phrase, like covidiots.