Covid clash
Like most things in the world Covid 19 has become weaponized as a political tool. Those that try to be conscientious of others by wearing masks, limiting social engagement and things of the sort are now “libertards”. Those that could care less about taking measures to limit their ability to infect others are hell yea maverick ‘mericans! Freedom!
My opinion on the subject as it is often the case, falls on both sides. Does it seem clear to me that there has been a bunch of conflicting information put out via mass media regarding covid 19? Yes. Do I think there have been efforts to inflate covid 19 numbers to generate both fear and revenue? Without a doubt it has. The medical industry has been extremely generous attaching the covid 19 code to hospitalization cases and especially deaths because it results in significantly more payment being sent to them by the government. George Floyd will go down in the books as being a covid 19 death even though he was asymptomatic and had a police officers knee on his neck for 8 minutes and change. Do I think that the affect of covid 19 is drastically more deadly than the yearly flu? The numbers say only slightly so, at best. I think the higher mortality rates at the beginning of this were reflective of a poor understanding of how to treat it. It seems like putting someone on a ventilator, which was initially described as life saving was actually in reality more of a death sentence.
On the flip side, do I think it’s a bad thing for people to wear masks to knock down their personal transmission radius? No of course not. Do I think that making steps to practice social distancing and increased personal hygiene is wasted effort? Nope, in fact I think some aspects of this will become the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future. There are still a lot of fuzzy facts regarding covid 19 and until we have a clear picture, asking people to practice these admittedly somewhat inconvenient actions is not the end of the world.
Mis and disinformation in our society is so rampant that developing an opinion based on actual facts is increasingly difficult if not impossible to do. It seems like most people skip the fact finding effort all together and rely solely on internet memes to both entertain and inform themselves.