The muddling of topics is exactly how centralized forces are able to control the narrative. Those who are the biggest influencers, the corporate media conglomerates, stand to lose quite a bit of their power and wealth if they were to actually provide facts without their agenda driven opinions.
The entire arrival of COVID and the ensuring coverage was tainted with the agendas of parties who have a prerogative to confuse you rather than educate you.
After a year, we still have people forwarding the ideas of lockdowns and wearing masks. The more draconian the lockdowns, the better for these people. Sadly, the data simply shows no correlation. Showing actual comparisons would be too complicated for the media, because it is too difficult to explain away obvious data.
Here is an accumulation of a few telling graphs. The comparison is between Florida, which has been opened with very few restrictions since September and California, which continues to enact further measures. The data should clearly show that Florida is getting crushed by COVID and California would be living pretty.
That wasn’t the case, though, as not even a month ago we learned about hospitals in California being overwhelmed.
Also, not very obvious from the available graphs, is the demographic risk factors. Florida is one of the oldest states in the country, with a huge influx of retirees opting to ride out their remaining years there. California has one of the youngest relative populations. So not only should California be faring quite well in comparison to the everglades based on its restrictions, but it should have an added advantage of demographics.
That is simply not what the data shows.
The narrative then shifts to discussing how it is a matter of compliance. Everyone is secretly breaking lockdowns and mask mandates. Cell phone data and other economic metrics don’t indicate that either. In fact, it seems to show that overall compliance is incredibly high.
That point is really meaningless. I need to address it because it is a blatant falsehood being promoted by the lockdown crowd, but even if it was true, it would actually speak to the ineptness of government policy to address the pandemic. It would point to Governor Newsom’s impotence, and not to a good policy.
I have addressed how I do believe that isolating sick people would certainly lead to a reduction in disease spread. I have even argued that masks might help even though I think the difference is likely trivial. I do not argue against them as measures, but as mandates.
Mandates simply don’t work.
That isn’t what corporate media are telling you.
Providing facts allows you to be informed. Being informed allows you to make better decisions. Better decisions mean you won’t be afraid. The absence of fear means they won’t be able to drive their agenda.
So the question comes down to what their agenda is. Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t think it is intended or even coordinated. I just think the powers all have similar interests and capitalize on opportunities to drive the narrative in the direction of those similar values.
There are hints. Coverage on the infections changed dramatically in the wake of the election. Even the narrative from tyrannical governors changed in the days leading up to the inauguration. With a political win in the books, they were willing to pivot on the narrative. Clearly there was a political perspective playing a role in their agenda. They saw Trump as the incarnation of Satan, or pure evil manifest, to a degree that they were willing to spread misinformation either knowingly, or subconsciously, out of a desire to protect us from him.
There are also the ideological aspects. Most of them rhetorically give up their perspective even if they tell us they love the people. In reality, they thing they are better, smarter, and otherwise preferred over us. When they tell the waitress she shouldn’t be working, it is because they generally think their intelligence is vast enough that they can dictate the preferred actions of countless other people to the betterment of society.
They are wrong.
There are other possibilities as well. Politics and ideology are not the only possibilities, although I think they are the most likely. There are several who have monetary incentives, and stand to make vast amounts of money the longer we live in fear, but the majority of them are not gaining individually. They gain from a deeper sense of satisfaction which is most easily explainable by a zeal for higher purpose.
There is not a single bit of the coverage on the vaccine that we can claim was transparent. Deaths, hospitalizations, infections, effective counter measures, vaccines or even the coverage of the personalities surrounding the pandemic. They love Fauci, who has admitted to intentionally lying to people to influence them, and they loved Cuomo, promoting him as a true leader. They ignore that New York still has some of the worst outcomes in all of these United States and that he is directly responsible for sending sick people back to nursing homes, increasing not only the number of sick, but specifically the number of sick among the most vulnerable.
The point of all of this is that you need to find people and sources you trust. You need to look for the facts in any source and evaluate them individually. Since most people don’t have time to do that all on their own, they rely on others, and that means they are easily influenced with a few careful rhetorical flourishes and opinions well-disguised as reasonable guidance.
Transparency should be the thing you seek most. You won’t find it on corporate media. You won’t find it on approved Twitter or Facebook posts.
You might be able to find it here. You can get your own coffee mug with the logo on it to support the blog, and me, the author.
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Thanks for linking to my post. 🙂
My pleasure. It was a great post and deserves more attention.