Every year there’s a new flu virus, and it kills a lot of people. Some years it’s mild, and some years it’s pretty darn vicious. 2020 is one of the years it’s pretty darn vicious. Cernovich makes the good point (hidden under a flurry of insults in all directions) that just because coronavirus is a flu, doesn’t mean we should ignore it, it means we should pay more attention to flu. There are reasons this doesn’t happen, none of which are edifying and all of which have solid cost-benefit figures, and is roughly the same reason the Brits don’t spend bajillions on snow ploughs and other winter equipment.
However, there’s something suspect about the hype. The last Big Flu was Bird Flu, and it was clear that Big Pharma was behind that. Big Pharma off-loaded millions of pounds worth of nearly-past-sell-by drugs on Health Services over the world. That’s a pretty clear motive. This time Big Pharma is very quiet, which means it doesn’t have any drugs to unload. Which is pretty much a first. Big Pharma claims to have drugs for everything, and a PR machine that shifts those drugs like hot dogs after a football match.
The Big Tell is that the victims are very rarely described. They are just “people”. Not one “We Lost Our Lovely Susan, 10, To Coronavirus” headline? Finding Susan, 10, thirty minutes after she dies is what Big Pharma PR firms do. There’s a muttering that the people who die have pre-existing medical conditions, but that’s it. If the majority were women, we would see headlines like “New Virus Targets Women”, but we’re not. Which tells you that most of the people who die from it are older men who are already in bad health and spending too much time in close conditions with others - like cruise liners and the Iranian Parliament.
Now look at who is reacting to it. Aside from the mainstream media, which stopped being a reliable guide to anything in 2016.
Panicky people are cancelling flights or not making reservations, which causes airlines to cancel entire flights in the future because the margins on most flights are tiny. The airlines are cancelling because profits, not because they know anything about viruses.
The University of London cancelled its graduation ceremony for the Class of 2019. Graduation ceremonies make losses. The James Bond movie delayed its release - because panicky people won’t go into packed cinema screens, so first-weekend takings will be down, and that ain’t a good look. Profits again, not viruses.
The markets are all over the place, as people sell on what they say is uncertainty and fear. The Coronavirus is benefitting short-sellers and people who want to get out of a position without other people asking why. Just say ‘Coronavirus’ and you can sell or buy anything and hide your real reasons.
Health services are using it as a funding pitch, but they use rainy days as a funding pitch. CEOs are using it as an excuse for their lousy trading results, but they use school holidays as an excuse for their lousy trading results. People who don’t want to do things are using it as an excuse not to do whatever it is they don’t want to do, and a virus sounds more plausible than global warming.
This is the never let a good crisis go to waste crowd.
Important things are still happening.
Commuter trains are still running. So are the metros. All full. Nobody is cancelling work. Odd how that never happens. (Except in the industrial powerhouses of northern China and Italy - those Southern Italians have been waiting forever to get back at the northerners.) All those International Women’s Day celebrations went ahead. St Patrick’s Day is going ahead, because are you going to tell the Irish they can’t? (Edit 10/3: OK, the Irish Government changed their mind. This does not mean it knows more than you do about how Covid-19 spreads and who is susceptible. It means they need to be seen to be doing something.)
I have no idea where the panic buyers are, but they don’t live near me. My supermarkets are full of Brits determined to prove that a panic is for taking calmly should it ever actually happen. (Edit 10/3: some of my colleagues at work have mentioned missing toilet paper and pasta. However, if the toilet paper thing doesn't turn out to be a guerrilla PR stunt, somebody's lying.)
There’s a real flu virus out there. It’s nasty. Some people in China got it, and so did some people on cruise liners, and the press covered that, because why wouldn’t you? If nobody’s interested, the media drops the story. But then the never-let-a-good-crisis-go-to-waste crowd got going and the media kept on running the story. It’s a good story behind which to hide all sorts of things. There’s a lot of things to hide.
Ten million people are not going to die of it. And, before anyone else calls it one, a ‘pandemic’ is not one hundred people in the whole of California. A ‘pandemic’ is when your neighbour has it, and the corner shop is closed, and half the people at work are off, and the hospitals are full and the nurses are dying of it. We haven’t had one of those for a long time.
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