A Case Of You: Expanding The Panic

“"I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.” George Orwell, 1984

UPDATE: 19/09/20 We now have a term for the pointless pursuit of testing: Caseology. You can learn more about the fruitless remediation efforts for COVID-19 in this video from Irish researcher Ivor Cummins about the useless testing regime instituted in 2009 following Swine flu. The pandermic is over, only to be replaced with a mania for positive tests using PCR system. Also more damning research on the failed “medieval” remediation of masks/ lockdown plus the accepted wisdom from “experts” advising governments.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-clearest-and-best-video-explanation-of-the-virus-the-lockdowns-and-the-impact/amp/?fbclid=IwAR19_Cnsu897bOToehykvYCMn6A01d9J3aLc5D9A5ly-mOpWjUfQlkVlN8U

Deconstruction of language typically precedes destruction of society.  When radicals seize control of what we describe as normal it’s head-for-the-exits time. As Winston Smith discovered in 1984.

“Racism” has been so widely abused that we forget there are only four acknowledged races in existence. (There are 1.5 billion Caucasians worldwide.) It is impossible to be racist against nationalities or ethnicities. Biased, yes. Prejudiced, yes. Racist, no. But the word is used everywhere as radical chic.

“Genocide” has been stretched to mean 10 people of a race killed by police from a population of 37 million. “Safe space” and “micro-aggression” are likewise absurdities marshalled to create victimization culture among women and non-white peoiple. 

And now, perhaps more pernicious, comes the word “cases”. As in, the widely repeated media claim that the U.S. has 3,489,817 Covid19 “cases” as of today. Canada has 117 thousand “cases”. The implication from these grim network bulletins is that every case represents a hospital ward teeming with the dead and dying. Fed by a voracious press, the power of this image has fuelled the mask mania, the six-foot standoff and school closings. 

In fact, the term “cases” simply refers to positive tests for Covid19. In the vast number of these cases the person has no knowledge they are sick. They simply feel that their throat is raspy or have a cough. They never miss work. But in the Covid panic these “cases” are thrown into the national numbers with those truly stricken by the virus and used to justify draconian lockdowns and social distancing.

Supporters of the “positives are dangerous” school point that maybe these people are not sick themselves, but they may transmit the disease to vulnerable elderly people or those with underlying conditions. Or these dormant microbes might kill them in the future.

By this standard, those who have malaria in their system should be labelled “cases”, even if it’s a dormant virus. The same for the dormant shingles virus carried by many who had chicken pox. Or those who carry the herpes virus with few outward symptoms. Healthy humans harbour as many as five viruses in their body at any one time,. 

Why do we not lock them down to prevent transmission? Of course we realize that it is absurd to do so. (Ironically, when the AIDS virus was ravaging the gay and drug user communities in the 1980s, the same people who today are adamant about lockdowns protested that stigmatizing communities with isolation was evil and ineffective.)

The Covid19 pandemic is unlike previous viruses that have swept the globe— because we have so much data about it. In the 1968 Hong Kong flu epidemic that killed approximately 100 thousand of all ages in America (pop. 202 million), there was no testing for those who did not show symptoms. We have no data on whether a large cohort of “cases” silent spread the virus. Or why they didn’t move from positive to active cases.

The pandemic occurred in two waves, and in most places the second wave caused a greater number of deaths than the first. Yet schools didn’t close, sports leagues didn’t shut down, the economy kept functioning, people travelled and society went on as usual. If people were frightened of the Hong Kong flu they certainly didn’t express it via the media. They accepted that in some years viruses are worse than others, old people are vulnerable and this is the of cycle of life.  

There’s another difference between Covid-19 and all the previous serious pandemics. Let’s say you had a virus that almost exclusively kills +70s and people w/ underlying conditions. Do you isolate the vulnerable 2) isolate everyone  3) isolate no one.  For every other major pandemic in history the answer was 1). When TB was a scourge the sick were sent to the mountains to convalesce or die.

This time, however, the brightest minds chose 2). The lockdowns, masks and distancing they preached have ruined the economy, panicked the population and caused yet another rift between the elite class and the governed. There is serious doubt that they did little more than spread out the deaths over a longer time frame.

Under New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state was a disaster of mismanagement, the banner “every life is sacred” caused people to believe the virus could be eradicated, like athletes foot. When deaths still piled up they panicked. Political actors anxious to use Covid-19 in the upcoming U.S. election refused to acknowledge the plain truth: viruses do whatever they please.

When things have been darkest (such as Cuomo sending Covid-carrying senior citizens back to unprotected retirement homes) the figures of authority used expertise as a shield to protect them from anyone who questioned that authority. “You must trust the experts!” they shouted. The cry was taken up by those who trust authority implicitly to keep them in power. “Why should we listen to non-medical people on this virus?”

Controversial researcher Andrew Berenson lanced the authority delusion. In a democracy, he points put,  “epidemiologists are technicians; they offer advice. Policy belongs to everyone.”

And sowing confusion with weasel words is the calling card of the modern media. If only there were a book about where this doublethink leads. Oh, right… ”History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this fall.