Remarkably, this “novel coronavirus” outbreak is generating more public hype and hysteria than the ongoing US presidential election. And, as I determined with the latter, I fully intended to limit commentaries on the former to one, which I published a few weeks ago.
I’ve been persuaded, however, that another commentary might help those fighting not only to cure this virus but also to calm some nerves. Accordingly, I share this humble public service commentary (PSC).
The coronavirus has clearly spooked the whole world. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the unprecedented steps everyone is taking to fight it. Those steps include the
- PGA postponing The Masters;
- ASEAN heads of state postponing their summit;
- NBA leading a time-out in every sport worldwide;
- Disney Company closing its resorts and theme parks worldwide;
- EU joining Africa as a target for Trump’s misguided travel ban;
- Metropolitan Opera leading a long list of opera houses and theaters going dark worldwide;
- Italian government quarantining the entire country of 60 million people; and
- Congress seeing several of its most-Trumpian members “self-isolate” after exposure.
That might spell pandemic but the effect is pandemonium. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 changed our way of life in many inconvenient ways. But the changes this virus is ushering in will mark the end of the world as we know it (cue R.E.M.)
In fact, governments from the Americas to Asia are declaring states of emergency. This gives them wartime-like powers (to try) to stop the spread of coronavirus – by any means necessary.
In some countries, this could mean only temporary bans on public gatherings and closures of everything, including schools, restaurants, tourist sites, places of worship, cinemas, and retail stores (e.g., Apple is closing all stores, the city of lights is going dark, and even the city that never sleeps is taking a very long nap). But in others, it could mean permanent bans on freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of the press, and other democratic freedoms. So beware the side effects of this coronavirus …
Alas, far too many people are displaying fetishistic yearnings to experience WWII-like conditions — without the personal sacrifices of course. Apropos of which, don’t get me started on the typically narcissistic way celebrities and social-media influencers are posting positive coronavirus test results as a misguided badge of courage.
Do you think any of them would do the same if they suddenly tested positive for HIV…? No, because for them, the thrill is all about playing martyr without having to die.
Of course, WWII lasted six years. I doubt most people can bear living in these semi-quarantined conditions for even six months.
This is why stress and anxiety over our radically changed circumstances (especially re jobs and social contacts) will probably end up killing more people than this virus. Indeed, once the novelty of social distancing and self-isolation wears off, mental depression might be competing with economic depression to become the leading cause of death among Westerners …
In a similar vein, what are we to make of the market analysts who are fearmongering all over TV about a global recession. Again, with apologies to FDR, what we have to fear is fear itself triggering a global depression. As I argued in my original commentary, when juxtaposed to the seasonal flu, no closure, quarantine, or state of emergency seems warranted.
Yet, given the measures governments the world over are implementing to fight this virus, you’d think we were already in the death throes of not just a 1930s-like depression but a 14th Century-like bubonic plague. My fear is that it is all creating a self-fulfilling prophecy …
Meanwhile, nothing could prove more controlling and therefore subjugating in this context than prohibiting gatherings for sports, entertainment, educational, ecumenical, and corporate purposes outside the home – as many governments are doing.
Mind you, keeping men quarantined at home with no sports to watch on TV seems a perfect recipe for brewing anti-government resentments. Alas, this also seems a perfect storm for a wave of domestic abuse …
For the time being, though, life for hundreds of millions, if not billions, will be one of quiet desperation. That is, except for trips to local supermarkets, where lots of sound and fury are prevailing for store shelves carrying nothing.
By the way, the only reason those shelves are empty is that panic-stricken idiots are buying stuff to hoard to no avail. There’s no need to subject yourself to that madding and maddening crowd. Just wait a day or two, the crowds will disappear and the shelves will be restocked.
This virus is clearly affecting the supply of blood to the brains of far too many folks. But, trust me, it’s not affecting the supply of food to the shelves of any store. Suppliers are all too willing and able to continue feeding the frenzied demand: Ka-ching, Ka-ching, Ka-ching!
Except, apropos of quiet desperation, I am all too mindful that millions of poor Americans do not have enough money to pay for daily school lunches, let alone panic buying not for an emergency, but just in case. Indeed, as they rush to close them, local leaders would be well-advised to consider what this portends for poor parents who depend on public schools to help care for their kids in so many ways.
In any event, here is what triggered much of this worldwide (re)action this week:
The spread of the new coronavirus has reached a pandemic, spanning 112 countries and regions, the World Health Organization declared, as disruptions to daily life ricocheted around the world. … The term has been applied to only a few diseases in history – a deadly flu in 1918, the H1N1 flu in 2009, and HIV/AIDS among them.
(The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2020)
To be sure, the WHO designating Europe as the new epicenter of the virus is scaring Westerners in ways having China as the epicenter did not …
As of this writing, the authoritative Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University had documented over 150,000 coronavirus cases resulting in just over 5,600 deaths worldwide.
I’m sharing this data because I took a lot of flak for juxtaposing this virus with the flu in my original commentary, “Coronavirus? Makes More Sense to Quarantine People with the Flu, No?” February 18, 2020. I assume the title speaks for itself.
I appreciate the way infectious disease experts are laboring these days to explain why we should be more concerned about this virus than the seasonal flu, which kills 56,000 people each year.
‘I mean people always say, ‘Well, the flu does this, the flu does that,’’ Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said Wednesday during a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
‘The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent. This has a mortality rate of 10 times that.’
(The Hill, March 11, 2020)
Except that, as I insinuated in my offending commentary, even at 10 times the kill rate of the seasonal flu, the coronavirus will have to go on quite a killing spree to match the flu pandemic, which we calmly live with each year. And just imagine the panic if we reacted to every case of the flu with as much alarm as we’re reacting to every case of this virus — complete with the media fetishistically tolling bells for every death.
What next? A requiem of all ages when the United States surpasses Italy to become No. 1 in deaths? Sick.
In the meantime, we have life-affirming case studies coming out of China and South Korea. For they indicate that the chances of an average American with no pre-existing condition surviving coronavirus is well over 98 percent.
As it happens, Dr. Deborah Birx, one of Fauci’s equally famous colleagues, made this point just yesterday. They are both members of the White House’s coronavirus task force; she’s its appointed coordinator. Here is what she said during a Rose Garden press conference following Trump’s declaration of a coronavirus national emergency:
Finally, I want you to know in South Korea, they did have a large number of tests available over the past several weeks. Their positivity rate is between 3 and 4 percent. With LabCorp and Quest’s expanded testing (here in the United States), their positivity rate is between 1 and 2 percent.
(CNN, March 13, 2020)
Emergency room physician Dr. Daria Long reinforced this life-affirming take during an appearance on CNN this morning. Specifically, she characterized this “pandemic” as more of a logistical than a health crisis. No doubt she’s hoping to prevent people from stampeding hospitals the way they’re stampeding supermarkets.
Incidentally, it is probably most encouraging that Dr. David Ho is joining the fight against this virus. He, after all, is the TIME Man of the Year who pioneered treatment protocols that have normalized living with HIV.
The holy grail of a vaccine still eludes him. But, just as Jonas Salk’s research for a flu vaccine helped him discover one for polio, perhaps Ho’s research for an AIDS vaccine will help him discover one for coronavirus.
In any event, I see no point is trying to disabuse anyone of their dogged intent to panic. Besides, just writing this commentary is beginning to feel like trying to ski up an avalanche.
Instead, I shall end it by hailing Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post. She had the balls to call out Rupert Murdoch for refusing to muzzle the lies and conspiracies his Fox News is propagating about this virus.
Here in part is what she wrote:
Rupert Murdoch could save lives by forcing Fox News to tell the truth about coronavirus — right now. …
[T]he mind-meld of Fox News and Trump is potentially lethal as Trump plays down the seriousness of the coronavirus and, hearing nothing but applause from his favorite information source for doing so, sees little reason to change.
There’s one person who could transform all that in an instant: Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born media mogul who, at 89, still exerts his influence on the leading cable network — and thus on the president himself.
(The Washington Post, March 11, 2020)
Welcome to the fight, sister. I say that because I’ve been calling out Murdoch in similar fashion for years — as I did most recently in “Social-Media Anonymity Just Gives License to Menace,” February 20, 2020. That commentary includes an excerpt on point from “Political Ads: Twitter, Facebook, Fox News: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. And Then There’s Google,” November 6, 2019.
But the insidious influence Murdoch lords over is so potentially lethal that I do not think I can repeat the following rebuke enough:
____________________
Rupert Murdoch can fix all that is wrong with Fox News with one phone call. Yet he seems perfectly content to preside over a propaganda machine that would shock even Joseph Goebbels with awe. But it betrays the conspiracy among media honchos that other networks go after everyone at Fox except that old fox himself.
So here’s to mainstream and social media pillorying Murdoch mercilessly for acting as Trump’s willing propagandist. It’s bad enough that his Fox News makes Putin’s RT worthy of comparisons with the BBC.
But, his anchors present propaganda with such religious conviction, their gullible viewers can be forgiven for accepting it as coming from Cronkite’s mouth to their ears. And don’t get me started on all the captains of industry who blithely associate with Murdoch, when they should be treating this Trumpian Goebbels like a pariah.
____________________
Given all of the above, this notorious bit of British propaganda seems fitting and warranted:
That said, I have three final points:
- Health clubs seem every bit the danger zones cruise ships have become when it comes to communal petri dishes that transmit viruses. This is why it’s so curious that, of all the roving closures, I have yet to hear of coronavirus forcing a health club to close down.
- Actors, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities must resent feeling obliged to greet total strangers on a daily basis like long lost relatives. This, especially now that autographs, handshakes, and hugs simply won’t do. Cheek-to-cheek selfies have become de rigueur. Well, coronavirus might have just ended all of that cloying fandom.
- Even Trump can see the writing on the wall for his defeat. His incompetent and chaotic handling of this pandemic is only bringing his fate into sharper relief. Therefore, expect him to begin making self-serving calls to postpone the November general elections to hold onto power. And he will cite the disruptions this coronavirus is causing and may continue to cause right up to Election Day. Granted, he has made busting norms and flouting laws such regular features of his presidency, it seems almost irrelevant that the Constitution prohibits any suspension or delay. Still, it’s worth highlighting that this is the same Trump who, just weeks ago, was calling the coronavirus a hoax that will disappear “like a miracle”—as soon as winter turns to spring. But nothing betrays his craven intent to use the virus to postpone the elections quite like this:
President Donald Trump suggested the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo should be postponed for one year amid the coronavirus outbreak. ‘If you cancel it, do it a year later. That’s a better alternative rather than having it with no crowd.’
(Sports Illustrated, March 12, 2020)
Never mind how unwittingly this betrays his fear of having campaign rallies “with no crowd.” No doubt you recall how he spent the first day of his presidency trying to convince the world that the size of his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s. He has continually made his presidency an international laughingstock ever since.
Epilogue
Notwithstanding my allusions to the seasonal flu, I find it instructive that Dr. Fauci is changing his tune. Because he is now warning that it is in fact far deadlier than the flu. My abiding trust in his expertise is such that I shall be guided accordingly. Still, it’s too bad the WHO did not name this virus a variant strain of the flu; you know, like bird flu or swine flu. Because, had it done so, I have no doubt that worldwide reaction would have been less panicked.
In other words, it would have spared us the wartime conditions and restrictions our governments are now imposing upon us. This, while fear and concern would have been enough to force governments to take emergency steps to combat it.
Because, no matter how deadly this coronavirus pandemic becomes, I cannot conceive of a need to lockdown the country. After all, as indicated above, the collateral damage would give devastating credence to that proverbial admonition about the cure being worse than the disease.
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