Future headlines, and perhaps hope?
A bit of satire goes stale overnight, indicating a possible turn in media fearmongering
I wrote the below parody news article yesterday. I’ve had second thoughts about posting it given that my cynicism on the Omicron front is, like the virus itself, quickly waning.
For certain, Omicron arrived with the typical explosion of terror-inducing headlines and semi-racist overreactions on the part of Western governments — travel and vaccine restrictions that continue to keep most of the world’s non-white populations out of Western nations, and a bias against science conducted in Asia and South America.
Yet I optimistically sense that the public is getting nauseous from the stench of fear that’s been pumped through our airwaves for nearly two years, and are willing to digest morsels of hope. Mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian have picked up on news relayed through local outlets in Asia and Africa that Omicron is “perhaps less severe” and that there have been no deaths reported out of the 3 million cases spread through 38 countries.
Canada’s national Globe and Mail newspaper found room to report, not so positively, about “turmoil at airports and criticism from WHO” caused by Canada’s insane desertion of its citizens in South Africa. Like all other major Western economies, Canada punished South Africa for discovering a new variant that had already made several stops on its world tour. Unlike other countries, Canada went a step further and stopped accepting South African PCR tests as valid. Returning Canadians are being told they must stop in a third country for a Covid test. Given the worldwide restrictions, the only option for Canadians stranded in South Africa is to detour through Ethiopia — a war-torn country for which Canada has issued a “do not travel” advisory. Why are Ethiopia’s PCR tests considered more trustworthy than South Africa’s? And why would any sane country put its people through this kind of unnecessary torment? It would be hilarious and worthy of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 if it were only fiction.
But perhaps the public — and more importantly, editors and journalists who shape public opinion — have become fatigued from manufacturing fear and outrage for the past 23 months as growing absurdities and contradictions in the Covid narrative are becoming more difficult to ignore.
Scanning today’s websites of CNN, The Globe and Mail, and The Guardian, I see scant mention of Omicron, or Covid in general. We have gone from “South Africa Hospitals Jammed with Omicron Patients” to crickets overnight. (Turned out the vast majority of those “cases” were asymptomatic and hospitalized for other conditions.)
I’d feel guilty posting the “Future Headline” story I drafted yesterday, since then I’d be the one overreacting to a problem that seems to have vanished. But why let a bit of clever cynicism go to waste? I’ll present this here as a warning — the story we should be on guard for in case the political and media establishment try once again to fertilize our fears with a fresh pile of manure:
April 18, 2022 - Scientists and world health officials are raising the alarm over the new Sigma variant of SARS-CoV2, which only causes mild cold-like symptoms, and, most worryingly, often no symptoms at all.
A UK researcher at the National Institute for Health said that Sigma has likely been circulating the globe for the past three months, going undetected because it has not resulted in severe illnesses, hospitalizations or deaths.
“We thought the pandemic was ending, but in fact we are in an invisible sixth wave, which is incredibly frightening,” the researcher said.
The Sigma variant was discovered in Singapore, although it is widely believed to be most prevalent in Germany, where most cases were subsequently discovered. Sigma has also been found in France, Spain and the UK. It is likely that the variant has been spreading across Europe undetected for months.
Therefore, the EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have banned incoming flights from Asia.
“You’d have to be out of your mind to think that we are going to allow developed Anglo-Saxon economies to take the blame for this,” the German health minister said, defending the Asian travel ban.
“Sigma’s genetic sequencing was conducted by some of the world’s most advanced laboratories in Singapore. Thanks for your help, but you touched it, you pay for it,” he added.
Asked whether it was fair to include all Asian countries in the ban, a spokesman for the US Department of Health said, “Data from Asia can be unreliable, so it’s best we wait for further studies from the UK and Israel before we decide which countries to exempt.”
The CEO of Pfizer, along with its board of directors and stockholders, are recommending that governments mandate its citizens to receive their quarterly booster shot as the only hope for defeating the Sigma variant before it disappears completely on its own.