Before liberals finally accepted that 2004 Democratic Party vice presidential nominee John Edwards was a scumbag and he retreated from public life, he spent 2008 running for the nomination himself by repeating the mantra that “there are two Americas.” Remember that? The philandering soon-to-be widower was right, though not in the way he was talking. There are two Americas – one based in reality, and the other based on left-wing fever dreams and a willingness to do or say anything to manipulate the public.
The coronavirus is real, and tens of thousands of people around the world have died from it. But it is not the pandemic we were told it was going to be. That’s not a complaint. If anything it’s gratitude. Thank God it hasn’t been worse.
Unfortunately, in the build-up to our current reality, the media noticed something – their ratings were up. Obviously, people were tuning in to find out if they were going to die or not. Telling them it was highly unlikely that they would only drive them back to their old viewing habits and away from cable news. Print media found the same thing with their traffic. This terrified Democrats too, with CNN and MSNBC, along with most newspapers, firmly in their camp and eager to spread fear and blame, something had to be done.
They broke out the boxes – a running total, always on screen, of cases and deaths which, without context, can only scare. The context is never, ever given.
“More than one million COVID-19 cases in the U.S.!” they screamed when the number was hit. What they don’t tell you is there aren’t one million people running around infected. The people diagnosed on day 1 aren’t still sick. They’ve recovered. But they’re still counted because without them, and everyone who has recovered sense, you can’t throw around the psychotically
impactful milestone number of “ONE MILLION!”
One million people, by the way, isn’t even 1 percent of the population (.3 percent), but that number strikes a chord anyway because, well, it’s a million. These news outlets know that, so it has been routinely hammered.
Moreover, the number of deaths has been beaten as well.
Each one a tragedy, they select specific cases to highlight not for informational purposes, but to scare people. The overwhelming majority of deaths associated with coronavirus are of elderly people, most with pre-existing conditions making them susceptible to respiratory infections. But how many stories of people under 60 succumbing have you seen or read? Likely the majority.
Yet in a piece titled, “Hundreds of young Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus, data shows,” the Washington Post reported, “The risk appears to rise with every decade of age. The Post found at least 45 deaths among people in their 20s, at least 190 deaths among people in their 30s, and at least 413 deaths among people in their 40s.” Additionally, the Post found another 102 deaths of people under 50. That’s a total of 750. Tragic, each one of them, but that’s .00000227 percent of the population. There is a higher likelihood of being hit by a bus while being struck by lightning.
This is a fear game now. The people whose job is ostensibly to educate the public is actively seeking to terrify them. The only reason to do this is political – it’s good for the company, and it’s good for the party (a line now so beyond blurred it’s obliterated).
Is coronavirus dangerous? Of course it is. Each person is different and there’s no way of knowing how your body will react to it, it’s simply too new. But, and it’s an important “but,” the odds of it ending your life is very, very slim, no matter your age.
The older you are, the higher your risk, but it never approaches anywhere near a certainty. Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” had it. She’s 78; she recovered. It wasn’t easy, it was scary as hell, but she recovered. Others who seemed perfectly healthy and were younger didn’t make it. But overall, your odds of getting it are low, and lower still are your odds of succumbing to it.
Pointing that out won’t increase ratings or traffic, and it won’t help defeat Donald Trump, so you never hear it. I always say, if you control the unit of measure, you will always be the smartest, the best, whatever it is you’re trying to be (my book is about this very thing), and that’s what is happening here. It’s a racket, a political game, designed to help Democrats across the board.
(On a side note, check out my podcast from Monday. I interviewed an American named Paul who is living and working in China right now. We get into the quarantine methods the communists are using, how much the people really know about what’s going on there and here, as well as how they view us and President Trump, and a whole lot more. It’s eye-opening.)
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.