The headlines:
1. Green-mapping
If you can redefine a term enough times, you can make it say anything you want!
2. Calm-mongering
The only thing we have to fear during an ongoing pandemic is fear itself, apparently.
3. DARVO
Forced infection is freedom of choice, and freedom from disease is oppression.
4. Myth-making
Why not manifest our way to a better reality, then?
5. False framing
You’re either with the virus or you’re against us!
6. Othering
“It’s a pandemic of the ______”.
7. Data Manipulation
Slow the testing down, please!
This is all true. However in focusing on 'public health authorities, particularly the CDC' and ignoring other factors it paints a rather distorted picture that implies they are almost solely responsible for the mess - when that is not true at all. Then the article goes off the deep end comparing the CDC to Nazi Germany. This gives readers the impression that if only we could purge the CDC of Nazis people would get the right message and everything would be sweet. But this is BS. The truth is that
we (the general public as a whole) are the root cause of its failure.
The CDC would have done a much better job if they were allowed to, but they were severely hampered by political interference. But even that didn't exist in a vacuum. Hillary Clinton said she would have done a much better job of handling the pandemic than Trump, who she accurately
described as a 'vindictive score-settler'. Trump's vindictiveness certainly was a major factor. He
gutted Obama's pandemic preparedness systems and installed sycophants who were incompetent or even antagonistic towards their roles. Then he downplayed the virus and prayed it would just disappear, because he feared that 'panicking' would tank the economy and make him look bad. So is it all Trump's fault? No, it's the fault of all those who
voted for a man totally unsuited to the role of President.
Clinton certainly would have done a lot better. For starters she would have continued the pandemic preparedness program and listened to what the non-partisan health authorities told her should be done. And she would have done the right thing regardless of the political fallout. This might have saved close to a million US lives.
But apart from that, would things be much different today if Hillary was president in 2020? I doubt it. Imagine she gets lucky and manages to contain the virus with closed borders, strict lockdowns and quarantines (as some other countries did). The CDC gets the right messaging out so people are well informed and understand why these 'draconian' measures were needed. 6 months later the US is Covid-free and the economy is booming. Awesome, right?
But we are forgetting that 40% of the population hate her guts and would deliberately do the opposite of what any Democrat asks of them anyway. Throw in a big dollop of selfish individualism and the chances of getting the whole country doing the right thing is nil. That means the virus will
not be eliminated, only (hopefully) suppressed long enough to get most of the population vaccinated. That's when we hit the next problem - half of them won't.
Eventually the
people get tired of Covid restrictions and ignore the advice given out by the CDC. Most measures have already become impossible to enforce anyway due to legal challenges, so there's no point trying to push them. The authorities just hope they can cajole enough people to get booster shots that the virus can be reasonably well contained. 3 years later the
public have decided the pandemic's over and treat it like any other disease - not even bothering to test for it when it they come down with something. Infections continue to come in waves as new variants appear, but nobody even looks at the numbers.
Sound familiar?
In New Zealand we were lucky enough to have a leader who was well liked and had steered us through previous incidents with swift action and compassion, so the public was primed to do the right thing when asked. Nevertheless even here it didn't take long for our patience to wear thin. We got the first bit right, but it was impossible to keep it up. Our government recognized that and took the brakes off as soon they could 'safely' do so.
China went even further, but even they couldn't control their people. At one point they resorted to quarantining entire apartment blocks and welding the doors shut on factories to stop people from spreading the virus. It didn't work. They had been virus free for years and still got hit badly.
The problem with a highly infectious disease is that even a tiny percentage of the population misbehaving is enough to thwart even the most draconian measures. In many countries the government barely has most of the population on its side on a good day, let alone when faced with an 'inconvenient' pandemic. Politicians are loath to take bold action that would cause huge backlash - which is the way we like it, because there's nothing worse than a dictatorial government forcing me to do something I don't want to do.
When 'health authorities' tell me I have to change my behavior I know they are just a bunch of Nazis on a power trip. Deadly virus? Yeah right. This isn't Hollywood and I'm not going to panic over them telling me the sky is falling! Professor x on Twitter says this virus is no worse than the flu (nobody ever died of that, right?) and taking horse medicine will cure it. Also masks don't work except for stopping me from spreading it to others which I don't care about, and I'm too tough to get it so masks are useless! They want to inject nasty stuff into my body too for no good reason. Not that I'm a sissy who's afraid of needles mind you, it's just the principle of it honest... As soon as 10% of the population have had it we will have 'heard immunity' (or something like that) anyway, so why panic?
