Living The Pandemic - Morning Rant II

Isolation Manor - April 16th, 2020

Total Confirmed Infected: 2,098,000       Total Deaths: 135,900

In a way, this isn't so much a rant as it could be.  More disappointment than anything.  I suppose what I feel could be summarized by the content of this small graphic:

Or, perhaps, by this one:

Simply put, it's all the completely ridiculous, far-fetched, silly, nonsensical, xenophobic, racist twaddle that we see every day, put out there by people who seem to have absolutely no clue about anything, especially science.

So, the other day, I decided to see what I could collect by way of lies, misinformation and conspiracies related to the current pandemic.  Very quickly, I realized that this was too big a task for one person (me) so I enlisted some help in the form of Wikipedia.  That organization had one very specific article dedicated to exactly what I was looking for.

Misinformation related to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic.

To briefly describe what I found, the article covered:

Conspiracy theories (the virus is a Chinese biological weapon, a US biological weapon, the Muslims had something to do with it, or the Israelis had something to do with it, or it's a spy operation or a form of population control.) [How the virus could be a product of all of these would be a good question].

Or, it could have been leaked accidentally from a lab somewhere.

There has been Medical Misinformation (there was already a vaccine, Africans are already immune, cocaine will cure the illness, the 5G cell network is responsible, vegetarians are immune, gargling with bleach will cure you [really??????], cruise ships are safe places to be....).

Or perhaps this is all a hoax to scare us into agreeing to a vaccine which will secretly implant a microchip in oour bodies designed by Bill Gates.  I mean...seriously?

Various governments have been spreading their own misinformation (America has promoted its own variety of this ranging from "it's a hoax", to the claim that there would be a vaccine very soon, that chloroquine was an approved and very useful treatment - "what have you got to lose?" - and so on.  Some of this has been discussed elsewhere).  The Brazilian president has steadfastly refused to recognize this as a problem.  Other countries around the world have reacted with varying degrees of stupidity, lies or inaction.  Sometimes all three.

Suffice it to say, it is a lengthy article and covers a lot of ground.  On Facebook (I know, why do I bother?) I've seen some posters claim that you can't make a vaccine for viruses because, you know, vaccines don't work for viruses.  Never mind that smallpox (a virus) was eliminated by a vaccine and polio (also a virus) has been nearly eradicated as well and measles (once again, a virus) is controlled pretty well by a vaccine, just as long as people actually get their vaccine when they're supposed to.  Such basic lack of knowledge is really quite stunning.

 What was really happening, though, a surprising number of people didn't want to talk about.

And this is the state of the world as it relates to science understanding in the early part of the year 2020, some 700+ years after Bubonic Plague rampaged through Europe.  As this article explains, we don't seem to have learned much since then..

Coronavirus and the Black Death: spread of misinformation and xenophobia shows we havnen't learned from our past.

This article from the Globe & Mail tells a similar story:  When misinformation goes viral: A brief history of plague panic, from the 1600s to today’s coronavirus crisis

And we like to think we're so smart.