# Is the COVID-19 pandemic being exploited for Political/Social/Economic reasons?



## heathercho (Mar 13, 2020)

> You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
> 
> Rahm Emanuel




I'm curious what the normie take on how the Corona Virus pandemic is being portrayed in the western media, by different officials and by politicians?

Ever single pitch I've had for articles in the last week has had the note of "talk about C-19 as well" tacked to it.
I've had conversations with colleagues, editors, media analysts who are overjoyed that Corona-chan is boosting "trust in the media" again, putting eyes on screens, papers in hands and clicks on news sites as people scramble for the latest updates.

On the contrary, other colleagues have expressed concern about how this is being exploited for political/social/economic gains. They've expressed concern that the mainstream narrative is, basically, if you aren't running around panicking, you're "dangerous" and going to "get people killed".

Politically, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, is using this "pandemic" to shit on Trump.
Do you trust what someone has to say, just because they are a scientist? Are they always altruistic, pure beings or can they use their position unjustly?



> Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton said at a press conference alongside Gov. Mike DeWine (R) that given that the virus is spreading in the community in Ohio, she estimates at least 1 percent of the population in the state has the virus.





			https://archive.vn/6z7Ue
		


Do you believe this just because someone makes an estimation based on some estimated model? If it was true, how does she plan on explaining the lack of visual evidence to support this?

Finally, are "Boomers" correct? Is this crisis being exploited to get rid of Trump?


			https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-maher-recession-get-rid-trump/
		




> MAHER: Could I ask about the economy? Because this economy is going pretty well. [Laughter] What? Why was that funny?
> 
> SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: It is going well … for now.
> 
> MAHER: Thank you. That’s my question. *I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point. And by the way, I’m hoping for it. Because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.*



Is it possible that this crisis is being exploited for political/social/economic reasons, or is all the panic perfectly justified?


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## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Mar 13, 2020)

I'd say both.


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## keyboredsm4shthe2nd (Mar 13, 2020)

Well it _is_ election time. Nothing fucks shit up more than a manufactured pandemic which affects people who live in smog infested shitholes with human shit  and mice rampant on the streets (China, Iran, LA). Have _any _of the deaths from coronavirus been someone with a normal functioning immune system who is young, breathes clean air, and doesn't frolic in human feces? Because the fucking Michigan governor just shut down every K-12 school in the state for at least a month.


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## Coffee Shits (Mar 13, 2020)

As far as political/social, this will absolutely be pinned on Trump in order to water down his votes come November. But in this hyper-partisan political landscape, it could be mudslides, earthquakes, solar flares or alien abductions, and it'd be the same scenario: our team good, your team bad. So let's take advantage.

As far as economic, also yes, because money makes the world go 'round.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you've got everyone's attention with a plague threat you might as well take advantage of it for your own benefit if you can. We're all self-interested, and that's not Current Year, that's not current culture, that's forever.


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## King Daddy Telomerase (Mar 13, 2020)

The timing is wrong for this to harm Trump. I think that when people get their sports, school, etc... back in a couple months, they'll just be glad it's over, nothing serious happened for most people, and want their normalcy back with the need to unite. I don't know about the economical impact, though. And I think Trump haters are stretching if they're trying to blame him, but I know that's always going to happen.

As for scientists, if they have any ties to gov't funding, do not trust them. I know that first hand.


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## Coconut Gun (Mar 13, 2020)

News channels get more viewers when people are more afraid, so they have an interest in mongering as much fear as they can.


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## JambledUpWords (Mar 13, 2020)

Yes. As with natural disasters, bombings, shootings, famines, and diseases, people never let a tragedy go to waste. If others can get more clout, money, or power from unfortunate events, some will absolutely take advantage.


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## Syaoran Li (Mar 13, 2020)

>Is the COVID-19 pandemic being exploited for political and socioeconomic reasons?

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

This is just another round of media fearmongering and cynical politicians and corporate leaders using a disaster to push their own agendas and for their own financial and personal gain. It's a tale as old as civilization itself.

Fear gets people's attention better than almost anything else. If it bleeds, it leads.


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## HumanHive (Mar 13, 2020)

Incompetence is always a more likely explaination than malice. And I think that applies to both governments and the media in the case of coronavirus.

In many ways, this is the first modern true pandemic. Oh sure there was AIDS, but avoiding that was as simple as avoiding sex and dirty needles. Coronavirus can affect anyone. Especially the elderly and those that care about them. So naturally, nobody knows how the fuck to react to this. And - at its most lethal - it only kills 10% of those over 80. Imagine what a virus that was even more lethal, to more people, could do.

Really, this is a dry run. And even then, everything is going wrong.


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## Honka Honka Burning Love (Mar 13, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> Does the Pope shit in the woods?


What is it our business what his holiness does in the woods?

And, yes..yes it is. The Mainstream media finally found something that they can talk about that isn't DRUMPH! and will get them clicks/views and the retards who run companies still think Twitter matters for some reason and are cancelling events because retards with no jobs keep hastaging at them.


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## Syaoran Li (Mar 13, 2020)

HumanHive said:


> Incompetence is always a more likely explaination than malice. And I think that applies to both governments and the media in the case of coronavirus.
> 
> In many ways, this is the first modern true pandemic. Oh sure there was AIDS, but avoiding that was as simple as avoiding sex and dirty needles. Coronavirus can affect anyone. Especially the elderly and those that care about them. So naturally, nobody knows how the fuck to react to this. And - at its most lethal - it only kills 10% of those over 80. Imagine what a virus that was even more lethal, to more people, could do.
> 
> Really, this is a dry run. And even then, everything is going wrong.



You had the H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic in 2009, but that was even milder and overblown than COVID-19 is. 

Ebola in 2014 looked like it was going to be a big deal, since Ebola is highly contagious and lethal as fuck, but thankfully it was successfully quarantined and did not become a major issue outside of Western Africa.

The World Health Organization's standards for a pandemic are primarily concerned with two issues. Is the illness a new disease or a new untreated strain of a known illness and has it spread to enough countries?

If a novel strain of flu spreads to enough countries with enough numbers, it can be labeled as a pandemic, even if its mild and only potentially fatal to the usual victim demographics of small children, the elderly, and those with weak immune systems.


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## Apteryx Owenii (Mar 13, 2020)

This is... not quite the big one. The only thing stopping it is that it's not lethal enough. But if you had to design a virus that would spread absolutely everywhere and be dangerous enough to kill millions through the power of large numbers, this would be it. And an economy buster. Some recent news coming out that it may make men sterile. That would be fucking hilarious.

The media swallowed the governmental lines about this being no big deal for awhile. That was a combination of bullshit to try and prop up the stock market and plain idiocy. The damage was done because there are still a ton of people that think "tHe fLu haS killEd mOre peoPle" means we shouldn't be worried about a virus that spreads faster and kills many more times the number of people than the flu, up until the point it surpasses the flu. Thanks to exponential growth that is obviously a stupid, stupid idea.

Now that people are just starting to wake up to how bad it's going to be, including the people who live but are badly injured (i.e. lung dysfunction), the media is going to make it out to be the end of the world. A lot of people are going to not be listening to the government because it lies (I found out about n100 masks on fucking kiwifarms a couple of months ago; good luck hearing about their efficacy from the CDC right now). Instead we're told to 'wash hands' as if that's gonna stop an airborne contagion.

It's not actually the end of the world, but it's going to be bad enough that it might be very destabalizing. Some governments will fall. Iran and North Korea are getting hosed. People are going to be fucking pissed.



keyboredsm4shthe2nd said:


> Well it _is_ election time. Nothing fucks shit up more than a manufactured pandemic which affects people who live in smog infested shitholes with human shit  and mice rampant on the streets (China, Iran, LA). Have _any _of the deaths from coronavirus been someone with a normal functioning immune system who is young, breathes clean air, and doesn't frolic in human feces? Because the fucking Michigan governor just shut down every K-12 school in the state for at least a month.


Doctors and medical personnel that are neither elderly nor infirm are dying. Probably due to the fact that they get exposed to a lot of the virus. Then you have random people who just kick the bucket despite not being over 50.

Then there's Italy and Iran. So many people are dying because the medical system has collapsed that we don't have good stats. That's the key to this whole thing. If you are the first patient to get sick, you stand a very good chance of being OK. Either you don't get very sick at all or, if you do, you have access to medical care. Ventilators, ECMO, or at least supplemental O2. There are a lot of people that survive because of these things. But there aren't even close to enough of them to deal with a major outbreak. That's when you get a real breakdown and the mortality goes way above the .6% they've managed in Korea. You get to well above 5% like in Italy. Hell, you'll have plenty of people dying of other illnesses because the medical system is overwhelmed. Don't have a heart attack in the next few months.

It's like in ye olden days where you'd have two armies fighting. Not a lot of people would die during the fighting, relatively speaking. But when one army turned and ran, that's when it would turn into a massacre. All the efforts now in places where it has spread need to be to try and slow it down so not everyone get it at once. The best we can do is hope as close to baseline mortality as we can get.


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## A Cardboard Box (Mar 13, 2020)

There's exactly one country we can look at in the western world where the virus is running unchecked through a free society, and that's Italy. We've known the numbers the Chinese have been publishing are bullshit for a long time, but we didn't know how bullshit until Italy. What Italy shows us is something we've been suspecting since China built a hospital in 8 days: the current infrastructure simply cannot handle the sheer number of cases that require medical attention. 

When it made it to the West, initially, even in Italy, the highest level of care was capable of being given. Virtually nobody died. The mortality rate of the virus was adjusted lower and lower until the "not even as bad as the flu" meme was in full swing. Everything was turned on its head when Italian ICUs hit capacity. The mortality rate was revised up and up until where it sits now which is just over 6%, which is worse than the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. Italian doctors are now unable to treat each case. They are triaging patients based on the "red, yellow, green" system that is most commonly seen in emergency disaster response. Green: will survive without treatment. Yellow: will survive with treatment. Red: will not survive even with treatment. Doctors are now having to make the impossible decisions of who lives and who dies. Emergency services are breaking down. Most famously a woman was quarantined in her home with her dead husband for 30 hours because they simply didn't have anyone to go get the body. 

It's bad. Not society ending bad, or boogaloo meme bad, or SHTF bad, but bad enough that the average person needs to make a plan for what to do in case the fabric of Western society starts to tatter in some areas. What happens if you call 911 and nobody shows up? What happens if the Walmart is shut down, looted, or sold out of basic supplies? What happens if the garbage trucks stop running? What happens if someone dies and there isn't anyone to pick up the body? These are questions people need answers to, and the answers provided must come from an independent source not reliant on government or contracted services. This is especially pertinent in large cities, where looting will be more prevalent and violence is already higher. 

Anyway that's my two cents. The real threat isn't the virus. It was never the virus. The real threat is the desperate people that feel they have nothing to lose. I'll get off my soapbox.


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## heathercho (Mar 13, 2020)

Syaoran Li said:


> >Is the COVID-19 pandemic being exploited for political and socioeconomic reasons?
> 
> Does the Pope shit in the woods?
> 
> ...



It's quite interesting how dramatically different the media/etc reaction is to this virus vs H1N1. That was rather deadly too and it wasn't played out like this is being played out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States. It's an interesting contrast.




A Cardboard Box said:


> There's exactly one country we can look at in the western world where the virus is running unchecked through a free society, and that's Italy. We've known the numbers the Chinese have been publishing are bullshit for a long time, but we didn't know how bullshit until Italy. What Italy shows us is something we've been suspecting since China built a hospital in 8 days: the current infrastructure simply cannot handle the sheer number of cases that require medical attention.



There are other factors at play with Italy though. Italy has been a 3rd country for a while, propped up by the EU's veneer. The people there don't have access to regular, semi-normal medical care normally. The place is an absolute shithole. Everything in Italy is filthy. The only thing keeping France's head above water atm is the fact they aren't quite a 3rd world country like Italy. Though they are certainly getting there.

Perhaps China's numbers were not as truthful as they should have been, but even South Korea is bouncing back atm - more recoveries than cases reported.
It's been everywhere in SK media, but they aren't behaving like Americans/Westerners are.
I find it interesting the contrast between western media and eastern media. Westerners accuse the Eastern Media/govs of faking numbers/supressing and the Eastern media is looking at the West's poor handling/over reaction.

From an eastern perspective, the American media is fearmongering.



Apteryx Owenii said:


> Some recent news coming out that it may make men sterile. That would be fucking hilarious.



In extremely rare cases, Sars can make men mildly less fertile. The Hubei thing was reflecting that known fact.
It occurs in such small amounts though, I don't think it'd be a massive big deal.
I've seen it also mentioned about lung function being impaired after C-19. That's fairly normal, with viruses like this.
It can improve with exercise in most cases.







Comments like this are hilariously autistic though.


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## A Cardboard Box (Mar 13, 2020)

heathercho said:


> It's quite interesting how dramatically different the media/etc reaction is to this virus vs H1N1. That was rather deadly too and it wasn't played out like this is being played out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States. It's an interesting contrast.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Your assertion that Italy and France don't have modern or adequate healthcare systems is laughable. They're developed countries. The two main problems being faced in the West are: the lack of precedent, as in there really isn't a knowledge base to pull from, unlike East Asia and SARS, and the inherent lack of government control in free societies. The US cannot simply start welding people inside apartment blocks or administering the final vaccine to those infected. There's a push to quarantine afflicted cities but there is a debate on whether or not that's even constitutional. In the West you simply cannot start locking shit down. Italy waited as long as it could before it did this and in the US it's doubtful it could be legally done at all.


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## Anonymus Fluhre (Mar 13, 2020)

keyboredsm4shthe2nd said:


> Well it _is_ election time. Nothing fucks shit up more than a manufactured pandemic which affects people who live in smog infested shitholes with human shit  and mice rampant on the streets (China, Iran, LA). Have _any _of the deaths from coronavirus been someone with a normal functioning immune system who is young, breathes clean air, and doesn't frolic in human feces? Because the fucking Michigan governor just shut down every K-12 school in the state for at least a month.


Children can get it, however no reports of them doing so. Just old sick people dying. No news agency has ever stated the ages, sexes, races, or if the people were sick before hand after China had stated that information. They're internally hiding information to make people nervous. Angela Merkel recently gone out and said that 70% of her population will get it. All of this shit is stupid, it's just fear mongering.


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## Vecr (Mar 13, 2020)

Anonymus Fluhre said:


> Children can get it, however no reports of them doing so. Just old sick people dying. No news agency has ever stated the ages, sexes, races, or if the people were sick before hand after China had stated that information. They're internally hiding information to make people nervous. Angela Merkel recently gone out and said that 70% of her population will get it. All of this shit is stupid, it's just fear mongering.



I don't think that's correct, children *can* get it, but they almost never die from it, possibly because of how it interacts with the immune system.


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## The Curmudgeon (Mar 15, 2020)

I like how the media is downplaying the fact that over 70,000 have recovered from COVID-19. At least, that's what I have observed. They love reminding us that it's spreading and around 4,000+ people have died, but what about the people who recovered?


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## keyboredsm4shthe2nd (Mar 15, 2020)

SuudsuAddict said:


> I like how the media is downplaying the fact that over 70,000 have recovered from COVID-19. At least, that's what I have observed. They love reminding us that it's spreading and around 4,000+ people have died, but what about the people who recovered?


You don't get clicks from recoveries and negating worries, you get it from fear and mass panic. They don't want the worthless paper the spent hundreds of thousands of dollars obtaining to be worth nothing.


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## Jewelsmakerguy (Mar 15, 2020)

SuudsuAddict said:


> I like how the media is downplaying the fact that over 70,000 have recovered from COVID-19. At least, that's what I have observed. They love reminding us that it's spreading and around 4,000+ people have died, but what about the people who recovered?


Well what are you going to write about? The fact that people are recovering? The fact that some of these deaths are likely because it's still flu season? Or the fact that China's new virus will kill thousands, if not millions?

Odds are is if you want clicks, that last one's the one you'll write about. No one cares about who lives, it's always the dead or crtically injured people talk about.


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## Thrasher (Mar 20, 2020)

In Brazil the virus is spreading very fast every day, hospitals only diagnose people when they're already in late stage and the partnership with China (its biggest buyer) is very fragile thanks to some parliamentary buffoon wanting to start shit blaming China for the outbreak (when in fact it came to Brazil through Italy) and comparing it to the Chernobyl disaster.

As if that wasn't enough, a big number of people are buying into this "China want to start a biological warfare" bullshit.

State Governors are trying to lockdown their states and The President ain't happy with that because he thinks they are overreacting and because he's a fucking jackass.

Considering that its public health system is inefficient (to the point of letting people die in queues), shit's about to hit the fan hard.

Talk about a country who's gonna have a field day.


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## ToroidalBoat (Mar 21, 2020)

You mean corrupt people who seek power wouldn't take advantage of a crisis - real or imagined - to seize more power?


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## queerape (Mar 21, 2020)

There's a real danger to underreacting to this, but the media is reporting on it in an irresponsible and misleading way. Recoveries are an after thought, they always throughout the horror numbers, and then there improvement they go silent. They never mention number of cases relative to population or increases in testing capacity. And. mentions of it are in totally unrelated articles. Its fear porn.


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## ToroidalBoat (Mar 21, 2020)

queerape said:


> Its fear porn.


So if you see a Westerner who isn't elderly wearing a surgical mask in public, they likely watch too much 24 hour TV news?


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## He Who Points And Laughs (Mar 21, 2020)

My state is on the verge of shutting everything down, so I'm just going to head to the beach and surf each morning.


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## Jewelsmakerguy (Mar 21, 2020)

queerape said:


> There's a real danger to underreacting to this, but the media is reporting on it in an irresponsible and misleading way. Recoveries are an after thought, they always throughout the horror numbers, and then there improvement they go silent. They never mention number of cases relative to population or increases in testing capacity. And. mentions of it are in totally unrelated articles. Its fear porn.


And it holds true for both, the MSM and the conspiracy theorists out there. And the latter often mixes it with literally any other conspiracy.


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## heathercho (Mar 21, 2020)

Jewelsmakerguy said:


> And it holds true for both, the MSM and the conspiracy theorists out there. And the latter often mixes it with literally any other conspiracy.



I think what I personally don't like, working in the media, is the deception that's going on in a drive for clicks.
It's to the point where Channel 9 Australia, is just outright making up headlines, paying "experts" massive fees for fearporn opinions (they could have chosen other experts with normal opinions, but they didn't) and then you have Sky News Aust are launching a new channel devoted solely to 24 hr Coronavirus news.



A Cardboard Box said:


> Your assertion that Italy and France don't have modern or adequate healthcare systems is laughable. They're developed countries. The two main problems being faced in the West are: the lack of precedent, as in there really isn't a knowledge base to pull from, unlike East Asia and SARS, and the inherent lack of government control in free societies. The US cannot simply start welding people inside apartment blocks or administering the final vaccine to those infected. There's a push to quarantine afflicted cities but there is a debate on whether or not that's even constitutional. In the West you simply cannot start locking shit down. Italy waited as long as it could before it did this and in the US it's doubtful it could be legally done at all.



Italy is a shithole and so is France. Italy has poor medical care in the North, it's been robbed blind by the EU and never made itself a decent economy to support all the freeloaders it has.
France has black people living in the streets. Neither are what I'd call first world countries anymore.


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## He Who Points And Laughs (Mar 23, 2020)

He Who Points And Laughs said:


> My state is on the verge of shutting everything down, so I'm just going to head to the beach and surf each morning.



Now the state is trying to shut down the beaches. FFS


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## Xarpho (Mar 23, 2020)

queerape said:


> There's a real danger to underreacting to this, but the media is reporting on it in an irresponsible and misleading way. Recoveries are an after thought, they always throughout the horror numbers, and then there improvement they go silent. They never mention number of cases relative to population or increases in testing capacity. And. mentions of it are in totally unrelated articles. Its fear porn.


Yeah, one of my forums that was never political is white-knighting the media and blaming the President for the virus, not blaming the media for pushing a run on paper products. Oddest thing is the only member who is the voice of reason is the one living in/near the northern California region.


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## Notgoodwithusernames (Mar 23, 2020)

I think the government made the plague on purpose to get rid of the population growth


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## millais (Mar 23, 2020)

The Chinese are going to be able spin this whole thing greatly to their advantage. All they have to do is send a few thousand ventilators and a couple hundred thousand masks to every badly affected Western country and they will be able to instantly buy enough goodwill to make people forget about their initially bungled response and lack of transparency that sowed the seed of this pandemic.

They are experts at the application and exercise of soft power, and a kind of crisis like this is the ideal opportunity for them to apply their talents in that respect.


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## Master Troll (Apr 27, 2020)

The taxpayer paid the bill twice


			https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/27/exclusive-federal-health-officials-investigating-wuhan-lab-suspected-of-leaking-coronavirus-taxpayer-grants-to-lab/


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## Master Troll (Apr 28, 2020)

heathercho said:


> Italy has poor medical care in the North
> France has black people living in the streets. Neither are what I'd call first world countries anymore.


In fact it was a number of factors that made this happen, (1) a large number of Chinese immigrants, (2) locking elderly people in old buildings without ventilation (3) a government that follows orders from psychopaths ...



Thrasher said:


> In Brazil the virus is spreading very fast every day ...  (to the point of letting people die in queues), shit's about to hit the fan hard.


Our hospitals are as empty as the U.S., and our mainstream media is the same as the Us as well... search on your own and stop eating in the latrine.  YT search by "hospitais vazios"


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