NYU Population Health Professor Anna Bershteyn suggests we keep panicking forever because it would be "really scary" if Covid "was as deadly as the MERS coronavirus"
I know this is my third post in a week on the latest Covid-Upsurge-Will-Kill-Us-All media vaccine promotion campaign, but it’s driving me unreasonably crazy. This garbage is now filtering into even the German press, though in the Federal Republic we have an average 7-day incidence indistinguishable from zero1 and nothing is happening in our hospitals. Thus our reporters are left to hyperventilate about the possibility that Eris might really be the supervariant this time bro and repeat infection statistics from countries that are an ocean away.
We’ve covered the American Studies undergrad at Slate recycling mask propaganda from deranged Covid lunatic Bob Wachter, and the Washington Post on the Covidian Quest for Free Virus Tests. Now it’s the New York Post with a truly egregious article screaming that infections are “up 55% in New York” and that “doctors warn of new variants.”
All these pieces have the same basic blueprint: They put the scare words in the headline, bury the completely underwhelming reality deep in the article, and then scramble to collect quotes from virus faithful explaining why everybody should worry nevertheless. Thus the Post finally quotes New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan in the fifth paragraph, who explains “that we’re not seeing anything in the virus that suggests it’s getting more transmissible or more lethal” and that “This is just part of living with Covid.”
That’s no grounds to relax for NYU Assistant Professor of Population Health Anna Bershteyn and her enormous forehead. Bershteyn tells terrified Post readers that “The most frightening thing to me is, we don’t know where that variant came from,” and also that another “most frightening thing is if the virus was more deadly.” For example, “if a virus had the transmissibility of Covid and was as deadly as the MERS coronavirus,” that would be “really scary.”
Part of me thinks that nobody should be interviewing this ridiculous woman, and another part of me wants everybody to interview her. Please, please make this stupid assistant professor the new face of Forever Covid Panic.
Some thoughtful readers objected to my mockery of the dead-ender Covidians, pleading that they’re just broken people who perhaps deserve a bit more empathy. I might agree if major newspapers weren’t printing their ceaseless tales of woe to support yet another round of jabbing. The plague chronicle is a small internet blog, but I’m determined to do what I can to bury lockdowns and vaccine mandates forever. Ridicule and mockery are the most important tools we have for this. It is a gift from the heavens, that the ranks of the Covid crowd have been reduced to such a sorry lot of feeble-minded unfit ill-tempered hypochondriacs, and that the vaccinators have no other allies in their ongoing quest to keep making Covid a thing. Maybe it sounds cruel, but after lockdowns and vaccine mandates I don’t care. I want the entire culture to associate public health hygiene initiatives with these sad people and their obvious personal infirmities. I want to make hygiene restrictions, green passes and masks every inch as ridiculous as the supporters of these superstitious virus rituals, to the point that these ideas are no longer fit to be aired in polite company. Then I’ll be happy to never talk about the Covidians again.
Yes, I know this is because nobody is bothering to test anymore. No, I don’t care. Either you can show something is happening or you can’t.
If the pandemic has taught us anything it's that the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.
'it would be "really scary" if Covid "was as deadly as the MERS coronavirus"'
Things are only scary if they are BOTH 1. Very contagious and 2. 'Deadly' (= high IFR).
Getting hit by a bus is #2 but not #1. Common cold is #1 but not #2.