There has been a lot of talk on the internet about free speech lately (I’m looking at you @Elon). The Twitter files have shined a light on what many people already suspected or outright knew was happening.
That government works with business and NGOs to shape the social conversation around the virus (this is apolitical, all sides are engaging in this).
The question becomes problematic when you see the results of that social engineering resulting in one of the largest preventable losses of human life in modern history (something many are still calling fake news), what exactly were they trying to engineer and why?
With incurable deadly disease, the answer is almost always yes (knowingly spreading STDs without consent is a crime), but we treat things like the flu as annual rights of passage, even though the flu can have deadly consequences.
“The flu, which is deadlier than the common cold, killed 0.1% of the people who contracted it in 2019. It is still too early to discern accurate global death estimates for people who have contracted COVID-19, but estimates have ranged from 1% to 25% of all cases, depending on the country.” – Reuters
Looking at the mortality rates, the numbers show something deeply disturbing. The US leads the world in total covid-19 deaths (there is likely a lot of reporting error in this number but it’s still very very high) and is 14th globally in deaths per 100,000. However, you’re most likely to die from contracting Covid if you’re from Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Peru, Egypt, Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, or Liberia; not places known for their outstanding health care systems and also many either currently or formerly experiencing nationwide conflict, famine, or drought.
What made the US so different?
Given the deaths per capita, my educated guess would be our inadequate rural health care system and lack of employer paid sick leave for everyone (stay home when you’re sick is easier if you’re not going to be evicted or starve for it).
And digging into which Americans were most likely to die?
“The higher rates of infection among people of color likely reflect increased exposure risk due to working, living, and transportation situations, including being more likely to work in jobs that cannot be done remotely, to live in larger households, and to rely on public transportation…Early disparities in vaccination rates by race and ethnicity have also narrowed over time. However, data suggest potential disparities in access to COVID-19 treatments, which will be important to monitor going forward.” You can read the full findings here.
And further still the conversation can’t ignore that per capita, children are more likely to die of the flu than of Covid, but that all respiratory related deaths are strongly correlated with age, and people over 60 are more likely to die from Covid than the flu, but just barely.
It’s that the rate of infection was much greater than the flu, it was novel, had several variants that were all equally difficult to contain, and didn’t have any easily available treatment other than ventilation.
From my basic understanding of public health and biology, and from a variety of other trusted sources, you can’t contain an airborne virus when a large part of the population is going outside intentionally coughing on people, meeting in large groups, and believing all kinds of things that have since been proven false, regardless of your politics. Science and biology don’t care about beliefs.
Exponentially more people died from Covid than from the flu and cold combined.
So given the timing of the event and other global problems, it’s not surprising that governments from all nations would use this opportunity to form a narrative that would suit them best for a period of time in the foreseeable future.
All messaging can potentially condition people into hating and distrusting anyone they feel is in opposition, (see this study on bias; one amongst many, it’s a well researched subject area, although this one is small with only 354 South Korean participants) and perceptions on truth are easily changeable.
“Collectively, our findings demonstrate the robust operation of partisan bias in the processing and sharing of partisan news. Misinformation priming aided in the detection of falsehood, but it also induced distrust in reliable information, posing a challenge in fighting misinformation.”
One study found that bot accounts frequently used religion and positive vibe messaging to spread falsehoods. For every ad you see, if one is bullshit, you’re more likely to think the other stuff is fake news, and you’re more likely to trust truthful information from people on your team, so it creates distrust and makes collaboration and coordination difficult.
Misinformation can make you distrust potentially life saving information. That’s why it’s so deadly. At what point does personal freedom and choice trump public health? Typhoid Mary certainly wanted to keep working, but what about all the people she sickened, do they have rights to not be infected?
In the fall of 2019 I was attending a graduate program at the University of Oregon. There is a great deal of intercultural exchange between UO and China, in all departments. Some of my classmates were concerned about Covid (they weren’t able to go home for the holiday for fear of not being able to return). Many people in the community started getting sick with a weird respiratory illness, we all thought it was just a weird flu, but then people started dying. But it took months to move on it.
Starbucks knew well before the official shutdown. Probably many many other companies with factories in China knew. I’m wondering what they did about it. How did they shape the narrative?
Was it intentional?
I’ll leave that to sharper heads to prevail, and I like to hope it was gross incompetence and not willful malice. All I can say is that Xi Jinping visited the only Level 4 secured facility in China working on viral gain of function to meet with the ‘Bat Lady’ shortly after the outbreak, not something he does everyday. We’ve had the evidence that it was possible that there was more to this than being a simple spill over event, and there is a large system in place to keep people from discussing it openly. So make up your own mind I suppose, I don’t even really know how I feel about any of it.
So, where do we go from here?