by Steven W. Mosher
Right on schedule, the panic pornsters are shrieking in unison that COVID-19 cases in the United States are on the rise. Virtually overnight, dozens of stories have appeared in the press, on the internet, or broadcast on the nightly news about the renewed danger.
Not surprisingly, the New York Times was one of the first out of the gate, warning us that “The U.S. Just Recorded Its Worst Week Yet for Coronavirus Cases: Cases, hospitalizations and deaths across much of the country are the highest they have been during the pandemic.”
It followed this opening with a salvo of stories that cautioned us, variously, that the disease doesn’t spare the young (“Elvia Ramirez Dies at 17; Youngest Covid-19 Victim in North Dakota”), nor small towns (“How Are Americans Catching the Virus? Increasingly, ‘They Have No Idea’”), and is still spreading overseas (“Rooster Kills Police Officer in Covid-19 Lockdown Raid”).
Not to be outdone, the Washington Post countered with an interview with the ever-menacing Dr. Tony Fauci. The headline says it all: “‘A whole lot of hurt’: Fauci warns of covid-19 surge, offers blunt assessment of Trump’s response.”
Inside of what should have been called its “Halloween Edition,” the paper had other scary stories to tell:
“A Woman Died of Coronavirus on a Plane” (subtext: Are you afraid to fly yet? You should be.)
“With Coronavirus Exploding in Europe, Hospitals Calculate How Long Until They Hit Capacity.” (Subtext: If you get really sick, there may not be a hospital bed for you.)
Similar stories are all over the Internet. You can Google it yourself. (Or, if you can’t stand Google, because it skews its search results for political gain, you can use DuckDuckGo like I do.)
The broadcast media is arguably worse. Grim-faced broadcasters on CNN and MSNBC might as well be wearing death masks as they solemnly intone the latest numbers of those who test positive. They even throw in the story of an untimely death or two to add a human interest element to their tale of woe. Somehow, however, they never find time to mention that mortality rates are way, way down. It’s always how we’re all going to die from the China Virus.
We haven’t been subjected to so much panicky reporting since the governors of Blue states like California and New York began to lock down in late March. At that time, of course, the fear was not entirely unjustified: we didn’t know what we were dealing with, and millions of deaths were being projected by our favorite fearmonger. Now we do know what we are facing, so the idea that we all need to once again huddle in our homes until the Virus of Death passes over us is nonsensical.
So what’s going on?
First of all, this whole media campaign—I say “campaign” because it’s clearly orchestrated—is designed to generate fear among the American public. And as everyone should be aware by now, whenever our Progressive elites call upon their media partners to gin up fear, they are up to something.
One clue comes from this past weekend’s Los Angeles Times, which warned that “Super-spreading Trump rallies led to more than 700 COVID-19 deaths, study estimates.” The paper wants Trump supporters to know that hanging out with other Trump supporters can be dangerous to their health. So go home and stay home, Trump chumps.
(Can you imagine the same paper running a story with the headline, “Superspreading BLM rallies led to more than 700 COVID-19 deaths, study estimates.” Of course you can’t. I can’t either.)
But slowing down Trump’s momentum by discouraging rally goers is not the real prize. Rather, it is to convince his supporters that it’s so dangerous to congregate that they should stay away from the polls on election day.
Many Democrats, who prefer to vote by mail or go to the polls during early voting, have already cast their ballots. Not so Republicans, the majority of whom prefer to vote on election day. In other words, spreading panic right before the election might disproportionately depress the Trump vote, or so those currently gaslighting the American public apparently hope.
To me, the contrived media panic of the past few days looks a lot like a “voter suppression” campaign. You know, the kind of thing that the Democrats are always accusing Republicans of doing. (That’s the “tell” of course. The Left always projects its own misdeeds on others.)
Having said all that, I doubt if the media’s fear campaign will faze very many Trump voters. Many have long ago stopped paying much attention to the legacy media. And the ones I know are so eager to re-elect the greatest president in their lifetimes—and so terrified of the socialist tyranny that awaits us if he is defeated—that they will crawl over broken glass to get to the polls.
The same can’t be said of suburban Karens, metrosexuals, and other denizens of the Left, however, who continue to subscribe to the alternative realities that the MSM is so skilled at creating. The citizens of China read the People’s Daily knowing that they are being lied to; those who read the New York Times do not.
It would be a delicious irony if, like every other effort made to kneecap this president by Democrat operatives over the past four years, this one blows up in their faces as well. I suspect that the recent wave of panic porn will make some Biden supporters so afraid for their own safety that they stay home.
Leaving the Trump supporters to storm the polls on today.
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Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order.
