Tag: fear

The Underrepresented in the Covid Story

Those on the left constantly opine that white males are overrepresented in Hollywood, in business, or in any other venture they can think of.  They say that we should correct that by discriminating against white males in favor of people of color and women.  Apparently, Democrats think people of color and women need help because those persons are not smart enough, talented enough, or hard-working enough to succeed based on merit.  Those leftists think that media attention should show a more representative sample of how America is, based entirely on percentages.  However, there is a segment of society that is far more underrepresented than any group the left complains about.  

I realized this injustice while I was getting my hair cut.  One of our local network news broadcasts was on the television and the anchors were feigning sympathy while gloating that a Republican who had spoken out against tyrannical mandates had died of “complications from Covid.”  My first thought was that “complications from Covid” generally means that the person died of something else while testing positive for Covid.  My next thought was that the only reason the media is trumpeting this story is that it fits their agenda of scaring people about Covid.  If they honestly cared about giving fair representation based on the actual numbers, for every story about somebody dying of Covid, there should be tens of thousands of stories about the most underrepresented group there is:  People who did not die of Covid. 

The media does not even acknowledge this massive group because it might inadvertently cause people to be less afraid.  They love reporting that we will die if we don’t do exactly what they tell us to do, but they hate it when we don’t oblige them by dying like we were supposed to.  Low death counts really frustrate the left.  The huge disparity between stories of people dying from Covid and those who have not died from Covid needs to be corrected. 

Since the left has trouble reconciling their need to scare people with their purported concern with proportional representation in the media, I am going to help them out.  While I can name myriad people who have not died of Covid (considering all of us are in that demographic), I will stick to people many of us will recognize.  Fortunately, Covid is as undeadly to celebrities as it is to us average Joes, so there are plenty of examples.  Let’s get started.

Tom Hanks – The panic all started back in March of 2020 when legendary actor Tom Hanks announced that he had Covid.  News reports made people contemplate what life would be like without one of the most familiar faces in the world. 

Update:  You might be wondering why the media would tell you about Tom Hanks’ impending death, yet didn’t even cover his funeral or people mourning at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  What jerks, right?  Well, I’m happy to inform you that Tom Hanks did not die.  The media had gotten the fear they wanted from the story so it ended at the beginning. 

Side note:  Many of you immediately think of Forrest Gump when you picture Tom Hanks, but I still think back to Bosom Buddies, when America still knew that men dressing as women was something to laugh at.  Hanks’ co-star from Bosom Buddies, Peter Scolari, actually did die this year, but did not have Covid, so it was barely mentioned in the press.  They were shocked to find out that even if you don’t get Covid it’s still possible to die.  In fact, the odds are right around 100%.

President Trump – In October of 2020, President Donald Trump announced that he had tested positive for Covid at the age of 74.  To the chagrin of Democrats, President Trump did not die.

Bob Barker – Yes.  Bob Barker is still alive!  I was as surprised as you are when I looked it up.

Me – I am not a celebrity but you are reading my article, so it counts.  Plus, I have been in the group of people who lived our lives fully and ignored the tyrannical rules.  The panicked wimps on social media have smugly been saying for two years that we will be wiped out by Darwinism, so I know it galls them that I am still alive.  Just smile at them and laugh.  It drives them even more crazy. 

Rudy Gobert – The first NBA player who tested positive for the coronavirus was Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz.  You may remember that he mocked the severity of the virus by goofing around and touching all of the microphones at a press conference.  He later apologized, but as it turns out, he was right.  Gobert is still with us.

The cast of The Bachelor/Bachelorette from every single season – There are just so many people who have not died from Covid that it is easier to list them in groups of hundreds of people.  Between the two shows there have been 44 seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, with right around 1,180 contestants, and while some have died, not a single one of them has succumbed to Covid.  I guess this is not the most dramatic disease ever.

The Los Angeles Dodgers – For the first time in 32 years, the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series.  Their victory was not without controversy, though.  During the 6th and deciding game of the series, third baseman Justin Turner was removed from the game because he had tested positive for Covid.  Though he was not sick, he was told that he could not be on the field with his team who he had worked so hard with for years to win a championship.  After the game, Turner came back onto the field to celebrate with teammates and take pictures with the trophy.  He even took off his mask for pictures.  This started a media firestorm.  Leftist sportswriters and commentators were swift to call for Turner’s head.  They openly questioned whether fines, suspensions, or other punishments should rain down on Turner and the Dodgers.  They claimed that he had put everyone on the field in grave danger with his irresponsible behavior.  Some even fretted that Turner had endangered the few thousand fans allowed in the stands at the game.  We waited with anticipation to find out which Dodgers would return to defend their title in 2021 and which ones would meet their doom.  A week went by.  Then another.  There was no word from the press on which Dodgers had died.  Eventually, spring training for the next season rolled around, and the Dodgers players took the field and played baseball as if they had nothing wrong with them.  Even Justin Turner himself was alive and hit 27 home runs after his death sentence.  If the sportswriters really thought the players were in danger, this survival miracle should have been a huge story.  Instead, there was silence, as if they knew from the beginning that it was a non-story.

All of the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL – The four major sports leagues in the United States bring Americans many hours of entertainment and joy.  They also bring billions and billions of dollars into the economy.  Between the MLB (1,026 on opening day rosters), NFL (1,696), NHL (999), and NBA (529), there are 4,250 players.  Some of you might be wondering how many of these players have not died with Covid and why is the press not reporting on it?  The answer is that none of these players have died with Covid and highlighting that fact might ease public fear.  Despite the 100% survival rate, these leagues are still requiring testing and canceling games due to Covid.  I guess they haven’t figured out the sabermetrics for Covid strategy yet.

The non-death count – I will wrap up by using a pretty staggering number.  We keep hearing a highly exaggerated death count of over 800,000, which even according to the CDC, counts mostly 80-year-olds with three or four other causes of death involved.  What needs to be reported is the non-death count, or how many Americans did not die of Covid to provide some perspective.  That number is approximately 334,031,568 at the time of this writing.  I say “at the time of this writing” because as you can see if you click the link, our population is actually growing.  That may surprise some of you, since you have been led to believe that Covid is decimating our population.  However, in fact there are more Americans now than in March of 2020.  So, the next time you hear the media complaining about groups being underrepresented in our culture and starting hashtag campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite, think about how the survival of over 334,000,000 people is being ignored by the press.  #AmericaSoPanicky

The Four Types of People

I have observed four different types of people when it comes to the coronavirus quarantine.  Type 1’s are people who are genuinely scared.  They think that we need to hide in our houses because otherwise they, or many of their friends and family members are all going to die of coronavirus.  I mostly feel bad for these people because, as I discussed before, their fears are completely irrational if you look at the odds.  Unfortunately, type 1’s sometimes overlap with the worst group, type 2.

Type 2’s are the people who are spreading the fear.  They consist of those overlapping type 1’s, politicians, and the media.  The driving force of this whole debacle is, by far, the media.  They have a couple of reasons to blow things out of proportion and scare people.  The first is attention and power.  Bad news equals ratings.  When they scare people, those people keep listening to them.  Members of the media love to feel important and affect our lives.  If the media scares enough people the politicians jump on board because they are scared by scared voters.  Plus they also love power over people’s lives.  Second, the media sees it as a chance to take down a president that they have been trying unsuccessfully to destroy since before he took office.  It very well may work.  Every person who dies, every business that closes down, and every person who loses their job is a good thing for Democrats come November.

Some of the many tactics that type 2’s use are: 

  1.  They give seemingly large numbers without providing any perspective.  The new estimate of 60,000 deaths may seem big, but the media doesn’t tell us that about that many people die every 8 days in the United States.
  2. They use models to predict future outcomes.  Later, when the actual numbers don’t match their predictions they simply update the model to reflect the new data.  They expect us to accept their models as truth even though we have seen them be incorrect time and time again.
  3. They tell us about celebrities who test positive for coronavirus.  They have to put a face to the disease and they realize that since almost none of us will personally know anybody who dies of the virus, they have to tell us about Tom Hanks, Kevin Durant and Idris Elba catching it to scare us into compliance.  The thing is, celebrities have always gotten sick.  It just normally is not reported.
  4. They lie about the death rate being much higher than the flu.  Considering the current reported numbers, combined with the fact that for every reported case there are likely 50 to 85 unreported cases, the death rate for coronavirus is hovering in the 0.066% to 0.1% range.  In other words, right around the same as the flu.

Type 2’s are also the people who feel the need to attack and shame anybody who dares to question the wisdom of giving up our liberty or, God forbid, doesn’t socially distance.  You see them on social media posting grim stories about how everybody is going to die, or complaining about people who aren’t wearing masks, or are playing tennis in the park, or want to attend church services.  They mock people as morons or say they have a death wish if they are seen with other people.  Unfortunately, type 2’s are the people you hear the most from.

Type 3’s are the people like me who think that the fear of coronavirus is irrational because the numbers do not justify it.  That does not mean that they think it isn’t real.  It certainly is, and the sick and elderly should stay at home.  Young, healthy people should be allowed to choose for themselves if they want to quarantine or not.  It should be up to that individual instead of the government.  Type 3’s still value individual liberty.  Some ignore social distancing rules, yet stay alive at a massively high rate.  The reason has nothing to do with them.  It is simply because the survival rate is massively high in general.  Type 3’s realize that it is dishonest when people are led to believe that there is a binary choice between quantity and quality of life.  The real choice is between a long, lower quality life and a long, higher quality life.  They choose the latter.  Unfortunately, type 1’s and 2’s are probably lost causes, and they outnumber type 3’s and control public policy right now.

This leads us to our last group, and possibly our last hope.  Right now public opinion is solidly in favor of the quarantine.  I know I’m in the minority, and the type 1’s and 2’s are not going to change their minds because the odds don’t matter to them and liberty is a disposable value to them.  Their numbers are relatively small, though.  The reason the polls still favor the quarantine is because of the type 4’s.

Type 4’s are the largest group.  At this point, they are in favor of the quarantine.  They are simply being cautious.  Their motto is, “better safe than sorry.”  While they are very averse to risk, they are also logical people who look around and don’t see the scary results that the type 2’s keep touting.  I have heard, more times than I can count, things like, “this doesn’t seem that bad, but let’s play it safe and see what happens.”  They observantly notice that nobody that they know is dying.  They also see that the few people they hear about who do catch coronavirus are surviving.  They see the numbers, and the fact that they just don’t match the gloom and doom predictions they heard from the media.  Most importantly, they do see the damage that the quarantine is doing.  They see a third of the country out of work.  They see kids missing out on proms and graduations.  They see people becoming depressed because they are lonely and barred from doing the things they love.  They will start to miss restaurants, sports, and live music.  The reason that they are our last hope is because at a certain point reality will start to become clear and they will begin to feel safe enough to want freedom again.  As type 4’s get more courageous, things will get better. 

As we move forward we will see that type 3’s were right all along.  There will be deaths, but not in the numbers we were warned about.  Frustratingly, the type 2’s will claim that it is because the quarantine worked and stopped people from catching coronavirus.  In fact, it’s likely that more people actually get it, or already had it, but it’s just much milder than how it was portrayed.

What type are you?