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Coronavirus Coverage Is What’s Making Me Sick
The coverage of the coronavirus panic is making me sicker than if I had the virus itself. It’s almost worse than the Mueller investigation or the impeachment trial. Our local newspaper is now reporting every time someone gets tested for the virus, much less having it.
When the pizza delivery guy came yesterday (it was Pi Day, but that news was blown from the headlines by you-know-what), I asked him if anyone came out to get their pizzas wearing a mask. He laughed and said no, then said it must suck to have pizza with no sports to watch. I agreed (my wife and I watched Girl on a Train instead). Turns out he was a Trump supporter, thinks the Prez is doing the best he can, and is looking forward to this whole thing blowing over.
So am I. However, this manufactured panic won’t blow over as long as the Dems and the MSM think they’re making Trump look bad (spoiler alert – they’re not).
Published in Politics
“People know what’s going on” . . . my wife’s comment as I read this post to her.
I think when this whole thing blows over without severe loss of life in the U.S., the Press will be seen as even more unreliable than it already was. I know there will always be that uncritical core group of leftists who will not change their mind for anything, even if it smacks them upside the head, but there are certain to be a number of more reasonable Democrats and Independents who say “Let’s see, they were wrong about Russian Collusion, the collapse of the Trump presidency, Iran beginning World War III, and now this?”
I’m with you on this one, Stad.
Yesterday we were reduced to watching a rerun of a Man City game. (Not watching, exactly, since some of the kids and their spouses and kids were in the family room at the time. But it was on, and TV screens are so big nowadays that you can’t help noticing what’s on, if only intermittently.)
I am well aware of the endless heated controversy over the question, “Is soccer boring?” (As I know you know, even though you may pretend not to, Man City is a soccer team, or “football club” to the foreigners and the bushy-bearded young men with nerdy black plastic-framed glasses and lumberman caps)
I do not wish to visit that subject, except to offer this observation: If you think soccer is boring, you should try watching soccer reruns.
If you think that’s boring, I watch chess tournaments on the Internet. In two days the 2nd most important chess event in the World, the “Candidates Tournament” will determine the challenger to World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. Two players from China almost didn’t make it because of the Corona madness.
Gosh, just watched some of Face the Nation and the anchor woman questioning Dr. Fauci was unbearable. Over and over she asked him a question then after a nuanced and complex answer she would follow it up with a over simplistic and/or hysterical follow up question. It was ridiculous. All these reporters want is a short quote they can tweet.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this goes, in that when the press has hyperventilated about Trump, or just politics in general, the vast majority of people could simply go along with their normal lives, and past freak-outs over things like hurricanes or winter storm threats have only lasted at best a week or so. This is going to be something that’s going to last several months, is going to affect virtually everyone in the country, and could go from the current hypothetical of millions of people may die, to millions of people might have died if we hadn’t hyperventilated … but only a few thousand people actually did, and it was within the normal numbers for an average winter flu season.
People on either side of the aisle may get angry at the media if they think they’re being unfair to Trump or Bernie. But people are going to be infuriated if they’ve lost their jobs, or have seen their immediate future income streams lowered sharply, for a pandemic that doesn’t play out. And they’re going to get even angrier in the future if the media for ratings purposes tries to make the current coronavirus reaction become the new normal. That’s when the hatred of the media among the non-political junkies is going to start rising exponentially.
People crave simplicity, but biology is not simple.
You should watch “Australian Rules Chess”. (Hat tip to the former comedy troupe “Almost Live”)
I’m interested!
I found it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJTGAILqoAk
Bravo! Then there’s Austrailian rules golf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhsn20IsDU&list=PL7A57B4092F5CE2EB&index=72&t=0s
Almost Live was a scream! It’s also where Bill Nye got his start . . .
Huh! I just knew that guy was a comedian!
But just like the toilet paper thing: Let’s just grab a package of the two-ply, since it’s here….
That’s what I keep thinking. “You think the people hate the press now? Just wait. That hatred is going to be incandescent before this is over. It’ll glow in the dark!”
Even though there were already flu viruses going around this winter, as there always are, and even though there were already people dying due to respiratory complications from those viruses, my guess is that if the pandemic fails to pan out by this time next month, every death due to the flu in the U.S. in the winter of 2020 will automatically (and even retroactively) be blamed on coronavirus, in order to justify the hype.
The questions asked at these Coronavirus Task Force press briefings are just awful. They’re all about trying to catch one of these guys with a gotcha-question. It’s sickening, and it prevents actual informative questions from being asked.
It’s really an odd mix right now with the big media outlets (and others within the normal bi-coastal elite infrastructure) of actually being worried that the virus might get them, and seeing the virus as a way to get Trump. So they lurch back and forth between self-interested hyperventilation and gotcha questions designed to have political effect instead of being informative.
(You also sort of see the same thing with Trump’s loosening of the rules to allow private companies to so more to work on finding an answer to the coronavirus, which the media this past week in general was all for, when their normal default position is the government is all-knowing and all-seeing when it comes to all things health care-related. They can, of course, equivocate, and say the CDC and others are botching this only because Trump and not Joe Biden is president, but their suddenly “Help me, Obi-Wan, your my only hope” attitude they had about giving the big evil pharmaceutical and biotech companies a freer hand to try and combat coronavirus was mildly amusing, but also a little sad, because you know the minute the crisis is over and they don’t think they’re in danger anymore, they’re going back to their old positions.)
Yep Fauci was saying, regarding testing, that as the private industry and labs ramp up production it will be a matter of days to a week that the availability starts increasing dramatically. Interviewer “so in a couple days the tests will be available to everyone?” He repeated that things don’t go from 0 to full production instantly but RAMP UP. Again she tried to nail him down to the exact number of days until the tests magically appear. UGH, sooooooo stuuuupid
I haven’t met one yet.
R.I.P. Measles Epidemic 2020.
“Died due to complications from COVID-19”
If you think the press is less than sober, I advise against checking Twitter. It is insane.
How unusual….
“Auntie Em! It’s a twister!“
You know, I think that guy was gay. I don’t know, he just gave off a certain vibe.
Kidding. That’s Stephen Stucker, who might have been the flamingist dude in a mainstream movie since the 30s. Like, Paul Lynde, except there wasn’t the cover story some people actually believed. Died of AIDS in 1986 – which wasn’t a shock, because he was gay, and it was 1986.
Anyway, the thing about Twitter, as one wag put it, is that everyone who was a Constitutional expert during impeachment is now an epidemiologist. Serious people I enjoyed following have fallen into catastrophic miserablism. This feeds something in people whose heart contains a empty room anxious to be filled with darkness. Beware the people who look at this landscape, and get a dopamine surge of validation.
“People whose heart contains a[n] empty room anxious to be filled with darkness.”
You’re a dang good writer, Mr L!
Stucker gave the funniest performance in “Airplane!” But he was the only cast member who didn’t play it straight….
He’s also an engineer who used to work at Boeing, but got into comedy on the side. He used to do crazy experiments on Almost Live, my favorite being the one where he disproves the theory if you’re in a runaway elevator and jump in the air just before it hits bottom, you’ll live.
Always was, always will be . . .