
The pandemic was just a ‘scamdemic’ – until truth hit home hard - contemporary343
https://dallasvoice.com/a-harsh-lesson-in-the-reality-of-covid-19/
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HarryHirsch
_And so, believing the pandemic to be a hoax, my partner and I hosted family
members on Saturday, June 13. On Sunday, June 14, I woke up sick._

Is this satire? The Biogen outbreak was in late February, the disastrous White
House briefing that caused the stock market to lose 30 % of its valuation on
March 17. What more confirmation did they need that the plague was on the
move?

 _A GoFundMe page has been created to help his in-laws pay medical bills
resulting from their illness._

Personal responsibility is for the plebs, we happily fall back on charity when
it suits us. And no word in the whole damned article about responsibility for
healthcare personnel, just for friends and family.

~~~
nathanaldensr
I thought COVID-19 had a weeks-long incubation period before the appearance of
symptoms?

~~~
rsynnott
Generally around five days, but yeah, they probably didn't get it at that
family party. They may well have given it to their family members, of course
(you're infectious before symptoms show).

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cryoshon
what can be said to people like the author?

"i told you so" is too bitter an admonishment for someone who has shown
contrition and suffered greatly for their sizeable sins. "sorry for your loss"
is too gentle. "why didn't you listen?" will simply devolve into partisan
bickering, and nobody will be convinced.

more importantly, what might we say to someone to prevent them from killing
other people through their ignorance and intransigence, like the author did?
rational discussion of evidence hasn't worked. legal mandates haven't worked.
social shaming hasn't worked. mass death hasn't worked.

and more importantly still: how can we hope to build or repair a society when
people like the author are so keen to drag us down, at least until they fall
victim to the very problem we are trying to protect them from?

we can't simply let them all get infected if they are nearby -- they'll drag
us to hell with them, as they already arguably have. at what point do we
refuse to entertain their backwardness? at what point do we withdraw from them
or exile them and leave them to their fate?

~~~
hprotagonist
“Go and sin no more” is the traditional dismissal, but it’s too often
interpreted poorly.

I am not interested in punishment or wailing and gnashing of teeth, or public
wearing of hair shirts or sackcloth and ashes. I want to see positive,
healing, restorative acts. We’ll call that a good penance.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I'm not interested in Truth and Reconciliation committees when this is all
over (not before mid-2021), the question is what can be done to improve public
health _now_ when you have people like the overpoliticized idiots in
Jefferson, GA: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/covid-georgia-
schools-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/covid-georgia-schools-
masks.html)

At Dartmouth they got to deal with coronavirus early on, someone who felt they
didn't have to quarantine brought it from the Biogen outbreak. They have
experience and the Dean of Students stated that Dartmouth is going to come
down savagely on frat parties, the punishment being expulsion.

Expulsion from society sounds about right.

~~~
hprotagonist
problem is, expulsion from society sure sounds like “make a natural reservoir”
to me...

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all_blue_chucks
I'm past the point of caring when pandemic denialists come regret their
mistakes, but I am intensely curious about why people come to be a denialist
in the first place.

People were in denial during the Wuhan lockdown because China so different
from West to start with. But once it hit Italy, there was no logical reason to
deny the existence of the pandemic. Understanding how so many people came to
believe something so obviously wrong could have some major implications.

~~~
calyth2018
I don't even get why people were denying it during Wuhan lockdown.

Did the fact that they're building not one, but two field hospitals with gear
within weeks not give them some clue that shit actually hit the fan, and the
only good news is there isn't a lot of direct flights from Wuhan to North
America?

~~~
all_blue_chucks
I was hearing a mix of higher population density, worse hygiene, expectations
of containment, different culture/government, skepticism of Chinese media
honesty, and (perhaps most importantly) downplaying by WHO and other experts.

Italy was the nail in the coffin for those... optimistic expectations. Except
among the lunatic fringe.

------
blacksqr
The Reality Market always clears. If people don't mark their beliefs to the
Reality Market on a timely basis, it clears with blood and fire.

------
Simulacra
I think it's both. It was a pandemic for many places, peoples, and nations,
but because of rampant media over-hype, speculation, and just plain bad
reporting, it gave the impression of being far worse than it might actually
have been. There is also the justification that the media's hype made it into
more of a "scare-demic" as seems to be the case for the media during election
years.

2004: Sars 2008: Bird flu 2010: Swine flu 2012: mers 2014: Ebola 2016: Zika
2018: Ebola again 2020: COVID-19

Yes, you will find SNOPES[0] and all sorts of sources that will say these
existed prior to the elections. My point is: These outbreaks/pandemics/etc.
may have never risen to the level of such mass hysteria had it not been for
the media's sophistic instigation.[1.]

[0.][https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coronavirus-
meme/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coronavirus-meme/)

~~~
pwinnski
More than 650,000 people have died so far around the world, more than 150,000
people have died in the United States. This is despite a massive economy-
rocking effort to "flatten the curve" and an unprecedented-in-100-years effort
to mask up and isolate and avoid interacting with other people.

Blaming "media" for any part of this, or for exaggerating its horrors, seems
so wrong-headed it's unclear where to begin.

You tout a conspiracy theory even while linking to Snopes demonstrating that
said theory is nonsense.

I hope that neither you nor anyone you love ends up fighting for their life
again COVID-19. Wear a mask, and stay home.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is despite a massive economy-rocking effort to "flatten the curve"

In the US, that was largely a complete failure because everywhere started
reopening because New York’s case numbers were going down while the rest of
the country was going up, and everyone declared “mission accomplished”.

