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Non Sequitur and COVID Foolishness
This morning on the way to work, I was listening to the local AM talk radio station. During a commercial break, the station aired a spot for an organization supporting “first responders.” For the most part, the ad was unremarkable and what one would expect–the main narrator sounded like a young girl, thanking first responders for keeping people safe and risking their lives each day, followed by a variety of voices (male, female, young, old) all saying “thank you.” But then they cut to the voice of a “first responder”…
His entire quote went something like this (I’m going from memory, so this is a paraphrase): “Each day I go to work worrying about COVID. I do everything in my power to keep myself safe from it and to make sure I don’t bring it back home to my family. So do what you can to keep yourselves safe too.”
Huh?! That was the extent of the “first responder’s” comments. How weirdly self-focused. How unrelated to serving others in need. How divorced from the current realities of COVID. No statement of how he’s glad to serve the community or that he finds great satisfaction in helping others. Just fear of COVID infection to and through him. For someone who might face actual dangerous situations, coming in contact with COVID-positive patients seems like it should be the least of his concerns.
To be honest, I’m not even sure what his point was, although I suspect it was two-fold. One, that we should appreciate how much extra dangerous the job is because of COVID (I’m not sure it was ever true, but it’s definitely not true at this point). Two, although the ad didn’t mention getting vaccinated, that people should make sure they get the shot.
Just one more example of what a strange time we live in. We can’t simply honor the efforts of first responders without trying to make some kind of (completely unrelated) political statement.
Published in Culture
I just finished reading Alex Berenson’s Pandemia. Even though very little of what he writes about was news to me, what our government(s) did to us for nearly two years (and in some cases are still doing) still makes me very angry.
I have no way of being sure about this, but my guess is that the ad was recorded during the initial wave of Kung Flu in spring 2020. The organization hasn’t bothered to send a new ad to the station, so the station just plays whatever they have in the “PSA” rotation.
Got to keep the fear zeitgeist front and center.
Or – it’s a refresher for the fall push to boosters and a fear booster. Propaganda doesn’t have to be fresh, just unrelenting.
You may well be correct. That would make the ad make more sense at least.
I’m more cynical. I think the first part of the ad was to lure you in–voices of kids will do that. Then they hit you with the propaganda–I’m a good guy-firefighter and I worry about COVID and you should, too.
Spotify still runs these ads for podcasts featuring Doctor Fauci as the voice of SCIENCE on COVID, and I grind off a few molars every time I hear it.
Yeah, I have no teeth left.
And maybe shaping the election battlefield. If the fear can be ratcheted up, plans to steal can be implemented. That’s why basement dummy’s voting trip for the Delaware primary was odd on a few levels. Conservatives got to harp on the costs of transportation and fuel that environmentalists claim to care about. Also, it was a missed opportunity to highlight the importance of voting by mail. It can now be claimed that voting in person is the way to go. A little slip from the propaganda team.
I still see and hear ads and PSA’s pushing vaccines and boosters for young and old alike which I find obscene. COVID is over – the vaccine is much much more risky to the young than is COVID and, except for the elderly and those with certain health problems, the vaccine and the boosters are also probably a bigger health threat than what’s left of COVID.
Denmark has banned the COVID vax for those under 50.
Not just “not recommended,” but banned.
A billboard went up in my town last month stating that you can ask your uncle about cars, but you should ask your doctor about the Covid vaccine. I guess they think they being subtle about combating misinformation…
We have a billboard advertising vaccines for six month olds and up. Can’t remember if it specifically mentions Covid, but I’m pretty sure that’s the focus of the ad.
This is the part that especially infuriates me–pushing the vaccine for the young. It’s demonstrably untrue that they (as a group) are at any calculable risk of death or serious illness. Further, at least around where I live, the ads (like the ones you mention) assert that young people make up a significant and growing percentage of those hospitalized with COVID. That simply cannot be true, but the lie is still spread.
**Edit: When I write “that simply cannot be true”, I technically mean that it simply cannot be accurate. I suppose someone can twist the statistics to show that (perhaps because the elderly are now less at risk then before) that the percentage of young people in the hospital (even though they’re in the hospital for something else) who test positive for COVID constitutes a larger percentage of “hospital/COVID cases” than was the situation previously. But to assert such a thing is still ridiculously misrepresenting the data.
Last week I went to visit a family member at Georgetown U Hospital which is even more COVID-fascist than the rest of the campus. Masks are required and only two visitors are permitted each day. If a visitor goes down to the gift shop and a vending machine and returns, that counts as two visits. Instead of 1 or 2 receptionists in the lobby to say what room the patient is in and whether visits are permitted, the 2-visitor-max policy requires an additional staff of 4-6 to manage a very large color-coded board with wristbands and markers for each room in the hospital along with a stack of handouts in English and Spanish about the new rules.
Given that (a) COVID-19 is now and will continue to be endemic and seasonal for many years and (b) it is impossible to now admit that masks and closure policies offer very marginal if any protection against respiratory viruses, how does one ever end such a policy?
My hope is that eventually (one year? two?) the rank and file office assistants/nurses/doctors/etc. will grow weary of the theater and quietly begin a form of “civil disobedience”. At some point the powers that be will relent, but only quietly and without admission of any guilt.
No. I think more drama and some kind of cover will be required.
That sounds about right. Just let the changes gradually slip in, slowly but surely.
Oh how I do hope you’re wrong.
I was out shopping so I snapped a pic.
Maybe this only appeared recently because they have run out of other ideas on how to spend free Covid money.
This kind of thing is infuriating. By analogy, I am a lawyer by profession, but I am not an expert at many legal issues. I suspect the overwhelming majority of doctors are also not “experts” in medicine generally.
I took my son to the doctor for a physical sometime in this past spring. I was curious what the doctor (in this case it was a PA) would say about vaccinating a 16 year old. Simply put, she had nothing intelligent to say about it. She simply said something like “we are generally recommending he get the shot”. She gave me no confidence in her expertise.
**Edited the first paragraph to improve clarity.
This sounds like a couched way of saying, “I’m told to say…” without saying those four words out loud.
Why does the color scheme match the Tranny Flag?
I wonder if YOUR DOCTOR is an expert on cutting bits and pieces off teenagers?
I think that’s a possibility. But the tone suggested to me that she had no interest in knowing one way or the other. Her experts/bosses told her that kids should get the shot, and that was good enough for her. I didn’t get any sense of skepticism on her part.
This is possible, too. My PA used pretty much the same words, and had that bland tone, and a non-committal expression on his face, but I know that he’s never received a single covid inoculation. When medical providers are employees, they are really in a bind.
Agreed.
The spouse and I went on two national weather websites last night to determine if this weekend will offer the rain storms that have been promised.
And both had banners reminding us about the existence of COVID, and how we could obtain more information by going to “WhyNotTryAndBeAfraidOfAnInfectionThatIsDisappearing.com”
Okay, I made the URL up.
But who in the world needs more info about COVID? And while looking at the weather reports?
I’ve noticed more ads on tv, too. They’re ramping up with fall coming, hoping those who get flu shots will get COVID boosters. Not for me!
Hey, it could be worse.
“I’m a first responder and my greatest fear every day is that I will catch monkey pox.”
What about social workers sent in to disarm drug gangs and murder suspects?
Or real concern about the patient.