Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

Some Reflections on Virus Bias

March 19, 2020 --

LPR realized that fear of the Wuhan virus  had  hit home when he went to the local Key Food, the evening of March 12, to pick up some orange juice, milk, soda, tomatoes, and red peppers -- a normal mid-week shopping list.

As soon as LPR  entered the store -- the scene before me  suggested that a huge blizzard had been predicted that night.   There were long lines at all the cash registers, and the shopping carts at these lines were stuffed --   with cans of  food, water, milk, meat, eggs, vegetables, etc., as if the store would be closed next day. Curiously. all the toilet rolls had been taken. (Did a rumor about a toilet paper shortage circulate far faster than the Wuhan virus?)

But no blizzard had been predicted. That consumers rushed to  supermarkets in The Bronx, and elsewhere in all likelihood,was perhaps justified with news that Broadway theaters would be closed, along with the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament (familiarly call "March Madness"), and suspension of the professional basketball season, and hockey season, and baseball season had been suspended. Why? Fear of the spread of the Wuhan (corona) virus. 

Consider the  Broadway stage alone.  The core tenet of the Broadway stage, till now, has been "The show must go on."  This long-time proud declaration of the theater was put to rest on March 12 with the  historical announcement  that  Broadway will  be closed for weeks, (as if public authorities warned that the entire country had fallen victim to the bubonic plague). 

This article is written on the 13th of March; Friday the 13th. LPR wonders what next over-reaction is to be expected. Will the national political conventions also fall victim to fears of the Wuhan virus whose course, although widespread, has been far from as numerous and  deadly, as pandemics usually are.

The media, led by The New York Times can be expected to use the Wuhan virus, now, to resume its effort to tear down President Trump, indeed, to turn him into a 2020 version of Herbert Hoover, the Republican in office when the stock market crashed in 1929. The Times headline for March 13 was:  "WORST ROUT FOR WALL STREET SINCE 1987 CRASH"

The day President Trump took office, January 20, 2017, the Dow Jones average closed at 19,827.25.  It hit its record high on February 12, 2020 -- 29,551.42.  At 1.55 pm, March 13, 2020 it was at 22,205.53, up 1004.91 (4.74%) from the day before, but down by more than 7000 in one month! By the time this posting of LPR goes on-line, will the market return to its bullish activity, or will it have zoomed back down to wipe out all against since President Trump took office?

LPR believes that common sense instructs that the media, led by The New York Times fervently hopes that the public will turn against the president. Below the banner front page headline, the paper printed a "News Analysis" by that anti-Trump dynamic duo, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, with this headline "Trump's Effort/To Calm Eases/ Few Anxieties."  But, of course, for the Times, the aim is to increase anxieties with reference to the words and deeds of the president.  Inside the paper, Ms. Haberman was back, this time joined by the anti-Trump Jonathan Martin with an article below this headline, "Trump's Re-election Chances Wobble as a Boom and a Boogeyman Wane."  On the opposite page, the headline declared, "Biden Drew Michigan Voters to Polls. That May Be Bad News for Trump."

The American people have plenty of time to see through any media-Democrat campaign to weaponize the Wuhan virus to convince them to elect Joe Biden president.  Indeed, the mere thought should shake the American people to the grim political reality facing them with President Biden inaugurated on January 20, 2021 -- an end to liberty as we know it. Indeed, one might wonder with some justice that the  closing of a variety of public institutions based on a relative paucity of reported cased,  is aimed at getting us accustomed to severe limits on our freedom.  As of March 13, in New Yorkj City, for example there were 96 reported cases, with another 328 in the rest of New York State.  Nationwide, as of March 13, 1,700 cases of the virus were reported, with 41 deaths.  It seems quite a stretch for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to speak in  worst case terms  and mention  the possibility of 1.7 million deaths.  

LPR comoliments California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for avoiding politics in praising President Trump for providing the assistance for the Wuhan virus-stricken cruise ship Grand Princess, making posssible its docking in Oakland, CA.

Lincoln famously said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."    People die from illness. Some forty thousand people have succumbed to the flu in recent years. Yet no official, no doctor, to LPR's knowledge  has been heard to call these deaths a medical catastrophe, and demand severe restrictions on daily life, including bans on political  rallies.   

LPR posts this scenario. Public officials clamp down on public gatherings.  A few weeks go by. American who come down with the Wuhan virus, including deaths, are far, far fewer than predicted. Thereupon the public officials who shouted "pandemic" pat themselves on the back for limiting the spread of Wuhan virus. LPR suggests, the only thing we have to fear, is fear of  persons with a particular agenda, making highly-exaggerated claims of possible contagion.

And after this promotion of public hysteria dies down, what next?   Fear of a deadly form of...measles. 

Proprietor's Note:   This posting of Lonely Pamphleteer has necessarily been shortened by the two weeks' closing of the Spuyten Duyvil branch of the New Your Public Library. LPR writes the copy for this website on computers at the library. Why will the branch be closed? Concerns about the spread of the Wuhan virus,apparently. LPR doubts that closing would be so widespread in effect, far more widespread than the virus itself, it seems, if a Democrat was president.