Facebook delivered an unwanted Mother’s Day gift on Sunday straight from Mother Russia, or through one of her many subsidiaries. When I returned home from a short bike ride around Annapolis, I was kind of looking forward to sitting on the back patio and checking out some heart-warming testimonials to mothers here and gone, but instead, there were multiple messages (a dead giveaway that something was fishy) with the latest conspiracy about how the COVID-19 novel coronavirus was part of a giant plot to destroy America. And because the alarming notice was so simple to understand, so obviously straightforward and clear, it just had to be true. So, many Americans bit the hook and started sending it out to all all of their friends like it was a shiny nugget of wisdom. I was in politics for many years and can smell bullshit a mile away and I spent the next hour sipping Balvenie and unfriending everyone who sent me the sham-fisted lie. And unfortunately, several of them were mothers.
The schlockumentary “Plandemic” was last week’s “let’s see how gullible Americans can be” infowar production. And millions of Americans fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
The latest piece of devious disinformation comes, of course, from a group that wraps itself in the American flag; this one a Revolutionary War-looking flag just dripping with patriotism. And they even put the word FREEDOM to the right of the flag, so you know it’s authentic. It looks like it could have been penned by the hand of Thomas Jefferson himself.
The group’s name is vintage Russian troll lingo. They call themselves Breakaway & Rise Up. They are playing on the, “Yeah, I’m tired and fed up and I’m not going to take it anymore!” frustration we ALL feel after over a month of being holed up at home, out of work, and away from friends and family. It must be somebody’s fault. Let’s blame some evil conspiracy.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Like COVID-19 is nowhere near as bad as the seasonal flu, right? And here’s an official-type table with numbers and everything to prove it.
The source at the bottom of the table is pure gibberish. And all of the numbers are completely made up from I don’t know where. Let’s just look at my home state of Maryland. On Mother’s Day, Maryland recorded its 1,538th death from COVID-19, not 302. And according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) there were 126 deaths from seasonal influenza in 2018. So you can bet your ass that the all of the numbers for every state on this jive-ass table are equally bogus.
And here’s something else. Ask your doctor how many deaths he has seen from seasonal flu. He will tell you, “Zero.” Statistically speaking, no one dies from the seasonal flu. They die from pneumonia or organ failure.
According to a recent article in “Scientific American“, a trusted source for science facts since I was but a wee lad, “the CDC produces the yearly flu deaths by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths — that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus — has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which is far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts.”
COVID-19, aint the seasonal flu, folks, it’s a proven killer. And no one is guessing about the mortality numbers and what was the cause of death.
But every conspiracy theory needs a bogus narrative and this one from Breakaway & Rise Up is no different. So, off we go into Never Never Land.
In almost every other state, the number of deaths from the flu far outweighed that from the coronavirus, except in NY, somehow the number of deaths from coronavirus is more than double that from the flu. Something does not add up. Interesting that New York accounts for 33% of total US cases and 42% of total US deaths, with a death rate 25% higher than the rest of the country. Why would human beings in NY respond differently to the virus than human beings throughout the rest of the country?? (Remember when De Blasio added almost 4,000 deaths to the list of people who died who weren’t even diagnosed with the virus? Not to mention that anyone who dies for any reason (i.e. NOT from the virus) is put in the list of people who died even if they were only exposed to the virus.) Clearly the numbers are being artificially inflated for political reasons (i.e. to make President Trump look as bad as possible while allowing the democrat governor and mayor to grab as much power as possible as they continue to delay reopening the state) and financial reasons (i.e. NY gets thousands of dollars for each person who dies from the virus and the state was already massively financially distressed prior to the virus directly as a result of its liberal policies, and they were literally begging for federal funds to bail them out – so this is their way of getting federal funds to use for purposes other than the virus to bail them out). Meanwhile the dems continue to put all of its constituents in grave health and financial risk, as they continue to keep the state closed for political reasons – at the massive peril to their own constituents – when they could be opened much sooner if they reported the correct numbers.
The only thing surprising about this horseshit is they didn’t explicitly blame the immigrants or the Jews.
Here’s something to remember: People who spout nonsense government conspiracies, like the one above, are either willing or unwitting tools of larger conspiratorial forces trying to plant the notion throughout our society that our government is a total failure and is out to get us. In other words, they are part of a conspiracy.
I mean, you never read about a government conspiracy to make people buy puppies or eat more bacon. And these sky-is-falling theories pop up all over the globe, like the virus itself. Here in the U.S., parents are letting their kids die from preventable childhood diseases like the measles because the government and Bill Gates are planting microchips in the vaccines so they can track our fat asses. In Britain, people are vandalizing cellphone towers because the new 5G technology is spreading the coronavirus. And in Mexico, they are killing doctors and nurses who have been accused of infecting the population. The one thing all of this has in common is the goal of ripping apart the very fabric of government and the social order.
But the need to blame is nothing new. As a recent article in the reputable magazine Psychology Today pointed out, “When outbreaks occur, people often find scapegoats to blame. Jews were shunned during the Bubonic Plague in the 1500s. During the 1918 Spanish flu, people feared it was being deliberately spread by Germans. The 2003 SARS outbreak was thought to have been made in a laboratory as a biological weapon. During the 2015 Zika pandemic, conspiracy theorists claimed the virus was bioengineered by the Monsanto corporation. Currently, 29% of Americans believe SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was deliberately made in a lab.”
Daniel Jolley, a psychologist and conspiracy theory researcher, discussed with the Trauma and Mental Health Report (TMHR) why people turn to conspiracy theories in times of crisis:
“Conspiracy theories bloom in periods of uncertainty and threat, where we seek to make sense of a chaotic world. They often provide a simple answer to a complex problem, and blame a group of conspirators for a problem in society, which can make them very appealing. The “official” answer does not always meet this need, is usually more complex, and is often provided by the government, a group that some people do not find trustworthy. People would prefer to focus on explanations provided by the underdog.”
But here’s the trick when dealing with disinformation: check everything you read that sounds sensational through multiple sources, like Snopes, rather than accept a Facebook post from strangers as the gospel.
It’s fine to nibble around the edges of tasty bait, but don’t bite the hook until you know for sure what’s in the middle.
With COVID-19, try exercising a little critical thinking.
- What do I know about this group (not the friend who sent it!) that claims to have uncovered this nefarious criminal plot? Are they credible? Are they a respected source of information? Is there more than one source?
- What would be the goal of killing so many innocent people?
- How would you kill so many people in so many seemingly random places around the country?
- How would you compel the local authorities — most of whom, at least in rural parts of America, don’t trust the federal government — to go along with this cruel charade?
- What would be the goal of wrecking the world economy?
- What would be the goal of shutting down America?
- Who would benefit from a third of the people in America being out of work?
- If this is all some elaborate liberal plan to discredit Trump, then why would all the countries of the world play along at the expense of their own people and economies?
- Before I diminish the sacrifice of doctors and nurses, first responders, families who have lost a loved one, or people gasping for their last breath of life completely alone, shouldn’t I take the time to find out what’s real and what’s fake?
And because there are no common sense answers to these questions, other than tinfoil hat baloney, then the only logical conclusion is: it’s part of a concerted disinformation campaign to turn the world on its head. And who would benefit the most from the political and cultural disruption of the free world countries? And who has a long track record of spreading lies on social media to that end? Uhhmmm, let’s see … Oh! I know.
THE FUCKING RUSSIANS!
