Whether you call it celebrating or properly recognizing, I feel they were doing a public service. Go back and read it, and you will see a distinct pattern, repeated literally hundreds of times. The same arc of (often vile) right-wing memes, conspiracy theories, and bravado, giving way to "tested positive, COVID is no joke", then to "calling all prayer warriors", and finally giving way to "X was the best, most generous person I ever knew". People who were obviously kind and good-hearted in their personal lives, but who had bought into, and propagated, the right wing disinformation loop.
A generation from now, when history majors in US universities take their required course on the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect that the HCAs will be required reading.
You were living in an echo chamber if you think that is true. I dare you to question any covid crap in front of your parent or (former) friends and relatives. Wait until they call you every awful thing in the book.
Criticism or intellectual curiosity was absolutely not tolerated.
My take is that this is something where most mainstream media outlets need to be saying "We got it wrong." Either they asserted covid was definitely not a lab leak without evidence, or they ignored major media outlets doing that without comment. The problem here is that this article spends a lot of time and text talking about how right wing cranks were kind of responsible and kind of wrong too, when, in this case, the right wing cranks actually seem pretty accurate.
When I'm wrong, I try to have the grace and maturity to say "I got this wrong. I got this wrong for reasons X, Y, and Z. Here is what I can do to prevent or mitigate X, Y, and Z in the future." I think an answer of that form builds credibility. People who see my mea culpa may gain confidence that I've learned my lesson and will do better in the future. If, instead, I were to say "A lot of people got this wrong. These people I hate were wrong too - kind of, I think they were wrong, they are pretty dumb. Anyway - a lot of people were wrong on this..." then that probably wouldn't inspire much confidence that I had learned my lesson. I read this article as more like the latter rather than the former.
It will always be dismissed by those who have a political interest in seeing things differently.
Authortiarianism and coordinated censorship between govs, big health and big tech made it so that anything countering the mandated narratives was heavily supressed and punished.
That's why the online world and the real one varied, no matter how many names and attacks the "mono narrative" mob used against those of us who dissented.
There will be no acknowledgement of the atrocities and human right abuses in the name of covid. No admission of guilt or bad faith. Just pretende that "we were wrong for the right reasons" and anyone who was right, if it's even admitted, "did so for the wrong reasons"
It proves that after people are repeatedly lied to - remember "don't buy masks"? Remember "go out and celebrate!"? Remember "restricting international travel is racist"? Remember "two weeks to flatten the curve"? that's just covid crap, there was 10x that on other topics, I'd just nominate "fiery but mostly peaceful" and let it rest at that. After all that overwhelming torrent of lies people don't believe a word that is coming out of our ruler's mouths anymore. And I hardly can blame them. Every gatekeeping institution that was supposed to take care of them has failed, has failed miserably and has failed willingly and eagerly. Of course people are looking for information in random weird places - because non-weird places they used to trust lied to them so much they finally gave up on them.
I feel for people in the science profession that sees issues with how they handled COVID-19, but society in general has been trained to treat anyone that questions the narrative at this point as actual Nazis. The left will straight up assault people with intent to cause serious harm and feel like they are some antifascist democracy-loving hero without seeing the irony in their actions.
I mean how right were they? There's hundreds if not thousands of cases of people "going against the grain" and then dying of Covid. People did die because someone wanted to spread some ignorant ideas about what they thought of the pandemic.
Disparaging COVID safety measures means it's propaganda now? I absolutely get disliking the economist (they are war mongering at every occasion), but criticism of COVID measures isn't some sort of weird agenda lol. It only makes sense to look back and see what went wrong, and if anything there is a huge lack of criticism of how it all went down.
Like I don't get it, would it have been propaganda if they praised COVID measures or?
Most people sure. But mid-covid a lot of otherwise sane very intelligent people (cough coworkers *cough) fell for this rubbish. Probably a side effect of the isolation and getting fed echo chamber nonsense 8 hours plus a day.
You could even forgive this if it was just the times, but scum like "Front line Doctors" and Steve Kirsch actively and knowingly pumped the misinformation to sell snake oil. This is the absolute least they deserve
> Local mainstream “fact checkers” have even called Covid-19 a “right-wing conspiracy theory” in early 2020.
Would love a citation or two. I remember the right-wing administration saying it would disappear as if by magic and Fox News saying "0 deaths" and that playing up covid was a left wing invention at least up to april or so.
Very sad account and I feel terrible for those people - not only because dying from COVID is a terrible way to go, but also because had they followed proper mitigating strategies, many could have evaded infection.
Question that should be raised, but won't, is why so many people choose to not only disbelieve traditional authoritative sources, like public health officials and mainstream news, but worse, think they are actively being lied to. The standard answer is 'fake news' but that's putting cart before the horse. Maybe the distrust comes first, and once those authoritative sources are gone, 'fake news' is what fills the vacuum.
Look at it from the perspective of a regular mainstream conservative: Mainstream news during 8 years of the Obama presidency had them do minimal work on holding the administration to account, and then promptly ramp up to 11 against the Trump administration - with much of the coverage being outright lies (like the Steele document, which was actual Russian misinformation paid for by Hillary Campaign, and used as a basis for investigating a presidential campaign, and even purposely misinterpreting statements, like when Trump called cartels 'animals' and news promptly decided that this was a slur against regular Mexican-Americans).
None of major news networks had open Trump supporters on staff, and actively shielded Biden and Democrats from any criticism. At the same time, those same outlets were/are pushing social networks to ban conservative outlets and label mainstream conservatives as bigots and attack them when they speak on collage campuses. Similarly, public health and government officials either ignored, or actively encouraged large scale anti-racism protests in the middle of the pandemic, while cracking down on Orthodox Jews who attended synagogue, or accosted people who visited their families for holidays (meanwhile officials like mayors of New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, as well as Speaker Pelosi, and Gov. Newson, openly flaunted lockdown rules and refused to even apologize for it when caught ... because rules only apply to the others).
But this mistrust will be attributed to conservatives, Russian misinformation and fake news, because that's easy.
Society r who had even a whiff of objection to the narrative. The number of ordinarily sane people who’ve yelled at me because I questioned something...
No way dude. History is not going to look fondly at the last two years at all. We should be ashamed at our arrogance and hubris—the idea that we could somehow contain or control an airborne respiratory virus. The sheer damage we caused to our children.
A similar sense of humility would be appreciated here in the west too from politicians and public health officials.
For misleading the public about masks, school closures, random lockdown rules for thee but not me, mode of transmission, vaccinations and it’s efficacies among many others. But the ruling class is too worried about its image and message it signals to its most benevolent donor class.
To start gaining credibility you have lost, it’s useful to acknowledge you were wrong. I think public would understand we are all humans. But alas our ruling class is too arrogant and dismissive to do that. Ever.
And that includes NYT for shamelessly bashing Covid as “the disease of the unvaccinated” as little as a few months ago and continuing to gas light and divide the public over a disease that is at its endemic stage.
By making it about COVID, the affluent readers of the New York Times can pat themselves on the back as if they weren't failing the youth prior to quarantine measures. Of course they were.
I've seen it. Everyone's seen it; even if they've chosen to believe they haven't. The secondary sources have to water it down like this article if they want to talk about it at all. And the primary sources where it's laid bare are a bit too dirty and undomesticated to mention in polite society. Not as if anyone wants to be caught cavorting with primaries at all these days, lest the blue checks turn their back on it (and you, by association).
Well, that and an appeal to authority. The entire narrative depended on appeals to “the experts”. Where “the experts” were the doomiest of doomsday “experts”. Anything other that “covid is literally the only problem we need to solve for” was all that was allowed.
If you dared to question “the experts” and their idiotic plans you were immediately tossed into the alt-right wacko bucket. Didn’t matter what your credentials were or anything. Only doomsday “experts” were allowed a voice.
To this day I still can’t believe how many people went along with that crap for almost three years.
I think its valuable to point out the author is likely being paid by a libertarian think tank that exists exclusively to publish and promote critical stories about COVID countermeasures. For contributing authors, the thesis that the COVID response was _morally wrong_ is pre-determined. These articles are not about analyzing the data and learning from it, but rather massaging data to back up the pre-determined thesis. It's not science, it's propaganda, funded by the right.
A generation from now, when history majors in US universities take their required course on the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect that the HCAs will be required reading.
reply