Another really interesting take that coheres with what I see happening: Julia Doubleday’s The Blind Spot. (Note that this is an American take, but I don’t think it’s much different in Canada.)
Remember the (pleasantly) surprising result of the midterms, where Democrats did much better than expected? All kinds of analysis about why that might have happened, save one: the very high number of Americans who died of Covid. As these deaths were concentrated in the over 50 group, surely this would affect electoral outcomes to some degree?
Or how about the recent news about Southwest Airlines and their troubles resuming cancelled flights. Everything was blamed on their outdated scheduling software. Nothing was blamed on their staffing shortages from illnesses such as COVID, which led them to demand that employees provide a doctor’s note before taking sick leave (issued on December 21, before their scheduling troubles began).
Staff shortages are occurring all over in in-person industries—restaurants, trains, medicine, education—but think pieces rarely say that COVID is contributor, and never suggest masks as a solution.
There has also been a large increase of sudden deaths from “acute myocardial infarction”, most significantly in the 25 to 44 age group. The anti-vax contingent has used this fact to blame the vaccines. when the actual cause is COVID. Problem is, there aren’t a ton of articles stating that COVID (particularly repeat infections) is to blame.
So people researching are much more likely to find scary vaccine misinformation than scientific data pointing to COVID as a vascular, persistent illness that can lead to heart and stroke problems later on, even in the young and previously healthy.
When celebrities such as Julie Powell and Pele die, it’s not mentioned that COVID was at least a contributor, and possibly the main cause of their deaths.
Lots of talk about the tri-demic this fall, without enough emphasis on the fact that all the COVID infections in the spring and summer led to worsening of flu and RSV symptoms, due to immune damage.
The “Urgency of Brunch” approach to public health hasn’t merely minimized COVID; it has disappeared the pandemic from view entirely. It hasn’t merely downplayed the deaths, it won’t even acknowledge them. The normalization of mass death is so thorough that people whose job it is to track infinitesimal changes to electoral make-up forgot they happened at all. The normalization of mass infection is so complete that mommy bloggers are complaining about their children’s severe and concurrent illnesses without any concern that a child being continually ill might be bad for them.
This year on Christmas Day, unmasked travellers across the country screamed at unmasked ticket agents, while unmasked leftists criticized unmasked liberals for the DOT’s non-response, while unmasked kids suffered yet another reinfection with a disease known to spike risk of heart failure 72%. Next year on Christmas, the picture will look much the same unless we confront our collective denial and acknowledge that COVID won’t go away because we pretend not to see it.
Julie Doubleday
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