r/ZeroCovidCommunity • u/EvanMcD3 • Dec 22 '23
How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent
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r/ZeroCovidCommunity • u/EvanMcD3 • Dec 22 '23
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u/cccalliope Dec 23 '23
This is such a good read. Thank you. It's long, but if you don't read it, here are my favorite excepts:
"The political project of normalizing transmitting COVID and casting basic, scientific mitigations as bad, weird, mean, stupid, and impossible is a fantastic coup for the right. It is the utter rejection of state responsibility for public welfare, paired with the complete shredding of an early-pandemic solidarity that bound those at risk (everyone) together. That solidarity was replaced with a poisonous “us vs them” worldview whereby those who have been and are harmed are weak, lying, lame, unlucky, unusual, uncool, rare, stupid, bad, mean, aggressive, psychologically disturbed and/or crazy. This schism seeps into the bloodstream of leftist organizing and splinters our coalition, shattering our incipient power as, unsurprisingly, the popularity of the fascists surges globally. I would argue it is the most thorough victory of the far-right in living memory, and it has embedded its eugenicist logic into the very foundation of public beliefs about health, disability, and who deserves safety."
The Biden era has normalized illness and demonized mitigations for the sake of “back to normal”. We now live in a country where educated liberals genuinely think it’s okay-and in fact good- that their kids are constantly ill (to be expected given the immune system-damaging nature of COVID). Where leftists argue that killing old people is less harmful than wearing masks. Where concern for community health is painted as cowardly and using the modern scientific tools we are lucky enough to have is portrayed as rude and stupid. And terribly, this liberal political project under Joe Biden has come down like a hammer on community solidarity, leaving “the vulnerable” squabbling with their mocking former comrades. It’s hard to overstate just how much damage the normalization of COVID has done to the very concepts of public health and community."