To say the COVID-19 outbreak has negatively impacted the general populace would be an understatement of gigantic proportions.
John Balentine, a former managing editor for the Lakes Region Weekly, lives in Windham.
Just recently we heard from the Centers for Disease Control that a full quarter of young people ages 18-24 have considered suicide in the past month. Mental health in all sectors of the populace is suffering, according to the newly released CDC data.
Nothing is as it once was. And while some of our increased anxiety is based in fact and can’t be helped in hopes of “slowing the spread,” other ways we’re responding to this natural disaster are just plain frustrating.
While I believe the virus is neither a hoax nor the worst disaster since the dawn of mankind, I do harbor some growing disdain toward our reaction to it. After five months of this, I’m feeling a little peeved about certain aspects of how we are dealing with the virus.
In the next three editions of Here’s Something, I’ll share some of these pet peeves:
First, we can’t seem to figure out what to call it. That’s a problem. I’ve heard many monikers: novel coronavirus, Coronavirus (note the capital C), coronavirus (note the lowercase c), corona, COVID-19, Covid, China virus, Chinese virus, Wuhan virus, Wuhan flu and, of course, the deliberately disparaging kung flu. There are probably others I’m forgetting.
I call it “coronavirus” just because that’s what it was called in the beginning. I’ve noticed the “cool kids” call it Covid. I don’t call it “Covid” because, well, I don’t trust cool kids and it sounds too scientific and cold, no pun intended. I also like calling it the Wuhan flu, because it started in Wuhan, which brings me to my second pet peeve:
President Trump has been raked over the coals for calling it the Chinese virus, which is unfair and points to how political this whole thing is. The Great Plague of London in 1665, the Spanish flu in 1918-19, the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 were named based on their place of origin.
It’s funny that Democrats and liberal mainstream media outlets won’t let this virus be categorized as such, in hopes of convincing people that Trump is somehow xenophobic.
Speaking of mainstream press coverage of this virus, there are too many pet peeves to be listed here. Suffice it to say, for such media outlets and Democrats, it’s all political and campaign 2020 related. For proof, look back about 10 years.
Most of us remember the H1N1 outbreak of 2009. According to CDC data, that pandemic killed 575,400 people worldwide and more than 12,000 in America. However, we didn’t lock down anything. There were no quarantines, no mandatory face masks and the media’s coverage paled in comparison to how they are covering this pandemic in the time of Trump’s reelection bid.
We were told to stop shaking hands and to use hand sanitizer (Purell became popular during this time), but that was about it. And there was a reason for this slack response: The presidency of Barack Obama was just getting going and the media didn’t want to attack him for doing little to respond to the health crisis for fear of being labeled racist.
Many people remember the media’s and Democrats’ H1N1 response, despite pretty staggering rates of hospitalization and death, and no wonder we grow more and more skeptical of those two groups.
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