{"id":202416,"date":"2022-01-03T12:01:13","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T12:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=202416"},"modified":"2022-01-01T09:20:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-01T09:20:59","slug":"mashup-omicron-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/mashup-omicron-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Mashup: “Omicron DEATH!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pandemic Scare-Coverage Reaches New Heights, or Depths, or Something<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U<\/p>\n

31 Dec 2021 – <\/em>For a while now it\u2019s been clear the primary objective of most pandemic coverage is to scare the socks off mass audiences. Good news, bad news, boring news, interesting news, news that\u2019s more of a wash in the final analysis, news that\u2019s a net plus overall: it\u2019s all presented as terrifying, more signs of the Apocalypse. There\u2019s no better example than the stampede to advertise the \u201cfirst death from Omicron\u201d in the United States.<\/p>\n

Matt Orfalea does a hilarious job of stitching together an homage to the latest moral panic. So many great little details here, from the \u201cWay Too Early\u201d background to one reporter\u2019s premature death report to the \u201caggressive Covid vice\u201d imagery, the dramatic Biden-cough, and so much more.<\/p>\n

It was the world\u2019s loudest record-scratch when the WHO in the first week of December said the ominous \u201cOmicron variant\u201d of Covid-19 had been detected in 38 countries, but without any known deaths<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No deaths<\/em>? How could that be? In the United States in late November, we\u2019d already skipped past the stunned-curiosity phase and moved straight into active mass panic, with \u201cfallout from the Omicron variant\u201d causing the Dow to fall 652 points in a day<\/a> when news of the mutant contagion arrived. Right away, we had a travel ban<\/a> from southern Africa, an address urging calm<\/a> from President Mumbles, and a declaration of a \u201cVariant of Concern<\/a>\u201d from the CDC, as \u201cscientists raced<\/a>\u201d to learn more about this \u201calmost Frankensteinish<\/a>\u201d new strain of Covid-19.<\/p>\n

The next month of Omicron coverage offered a fascinating window into our Covid-fixated future. For most of December, we were presented with an unbroken string of scare stories that in many cases actively buried the lede on the most important question: is this thing going to kill me? The Washington Post <\/em>on December 14th, for instance, ran a story about how the \u201cCDC warns\u201d that a \u201cpunishing wave<\/a>\u201d could be coming as soon as January. The piece noted Omicron was \u201cdramatically more transmissible\u201d and \u201ca more slippery foe when encountered by neutralizing antibodies,\u201d but ignored the issue of lethality altogether, which would seem impossible to do by accident.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow deadly is the Omicron variant? WHO releases death report,\u201d wrote<\/a> the Express <\/em>U.K. earlier this week, with the following sub-headline:<\/p>\n

OMICRON cases have increased more than tenfold since authorities identified the first UK infections in November, but scientists\u2019 knowledge of the variant has increased in kind. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its first death report this weekend, outlining how dangerous it really is.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading that headline hits your fear center, making you anxious to know just exactly \u201chow dangerous it really is.\u201d What does that mean? Scrolling down, you first read that Omicron mutations \u201callow it to escape immunity provided by both vaccine doses,\u201d that \u201cit reduces two doses of Pfizer to 30 percent effectiveness, with AstraZeneca potentially down to zero,\u201d and that while boosters can restore effectiveness to 75 percent, \u201cmany are at Omicron’s mercy.\u201d Not good!<\/p>\n

Only far down the piece do you read that since the WHO\u2019s \u201cno deaths\u201d report in early December, the disease has \u201cspread rapidly, and one<\/strong> person in the UK has died with<\/strong> the new variant\u2026 Recent data suggests the disease Omicron causes is milder than its predecessors<\/strong>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The distinction between \u201cdying with\u201d and \u201cdying from\u201d is a sticking point in theory if you\u2019re trying to accurately gauge the lethality of a thing, but journalists have mostly shrugged it off.<\/p>\n

On December 20th, a man in Houston died \u201cwith\u201d Omicron. The Harris County Public Health office issued a release citing an \u201cOmicron Variant-Related<\/a>\u201d death, but Harris County judge Lisa Hidalgo, sporting a stylish tree-branch-pattern mask, wasted no time in announcing<\/a>, \u201cThe Omicron variant of COVID-19 has arrived in full force.\u201d<\/p>\n

As shown in Matt\u2019s video, Hidalgo raised the county\u2019s County\u2019s Covid-19 \u201cthreat level\u201d status to \u201cLevel-2 Orange,\u201d bringing us back to the halcyon days of the War on Terror, when the government each day assigned us a mathematical Expected Freakout Level (EFL) about things over which we had no control.<\/p>\n

Within hours, national press outlets like CNN had reported the \u201cfirst death attributed to the Omicron variant,\u201d gushing, as Jeremy Diamond is shown doing in this video, that \u201cCovid surges are surging!\u201d Pundits wasted little time wagging their bony death-fingers in our direction: \u201cFirst Omicron Death in U.S. Was Reinfection\u2014A Warning to Those Who\u2019ve Already Had COVID,\u201d wrote<\/a> Newsweek.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shortly after, a Harris County Public Health official named Martha Marquez hedged, saying they could confirm the dead man was Omicron-positive, but the cause of death had not yet been determined.<\/p>\n

The arrival of both the Delta and Omicron variants were reported in ways that recalled the classic \u201cAfricanized killer bees\u201d media panics of yore. Stay in your homes and be vigilant about the highly aggressive African invader who just might move in next door: for a good long time, this was a staple of local TV, as noted in Bowling for Columbine:<\/em><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_giYxaz46c0<\/p>\n

Descriptions of Omicron as the scary scary thing coming from southern Africa have been near carbon-copies<\/a> of those old bee stories. Kudos to the few outlets at home and in Europe that pointed out the hypocrisy of this coverage. If you\u2019re really bent on using the deadly new \u201cAfricanized\u201d variant to frighten people into getting vaccinated, shouldn\u2019t you also be \u201cracing\u201d to pass patent waivers so countries like India and South Africa<\/a> can make their own vaccines, thereby preventing the spread of mutations before they even have a chance to become headlines here?<\/p>\n

If they\u2019re determined to keep going in the scare direction, they should do a better job of it. Omicron is certainly an improvement over Delta, but they should dispense with the pretense and start giving true Fangoria <\/em>names to coronavirus strains: the \u201cMutilator\u201d Variant, the \u201cSuffocating Agony\u201d variant, the \u201cShaft-Sagger,\u201d the \u201cFace-Eater,\u201d etc. Would you bet against something like that coming?<\/p>\n

* That is not @Orf in the death suit<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matthew C. Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for <\/em>Rolling Stone, author of several books, a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary<\/em>, co-host of <\/em>Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on <\/em>Substack.<\/p>\n

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Matt Orfalea – Censored News<\/strong> -Exposing authoritarian censorship by big tech, the government, & the media.<\/div>\n
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Go to Original \u2013 taibbi.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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