Looking at most Americans’ placid acceptance of the official party line on the coronavirus outbreak, you can see where a story like The Emperor’s New Clothes comes from. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Are people innumerate? Or indifferent?
Perhaps, they’re just lazy. Or – worse – industriously eager to demonstrate their virtue (really, the virtue they’re told to demonstrate) by waking around with their mouths Diapered, pretending to be diseased and treating others as diseased.
It is of a piece with the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes – which probably isn’t told to kids anymore because of the lesson it imparts about the dangers of pretending to see what isn’t there because the people all around you say they see it.
Of course, you can’t see a virus.
But you can see numbers. If, that is, you’re willing to look at them. This takes more effort, of course, than listening to Anderson Cooper. Which is apparently too much effort for lots of people, who – apparently – would rather “see” what practically everyone else seems to “see”- which is lots of “cases” of the WuFlu.
Never mind the decrease in people dying of it.
The “cases” being reported go up almost hourly – replacing the no-longer-effective body count being reported (because there weren’t enough bodies to count). This increase in “cases” is taken as ominous but almost no one bothers to ask whether more – or fewer – bodies are stacking up like cordwood on account of it.
Twenty guesses as to the answer.
But instead of the right answer – the death rate is going down as the number of “cases” goes up – and asking themselves what that implies (an even lower risk of dying than the already-known practically nonexistent risk) they behave as though the peril increases.
Reblogged this on uwerolandgross.