And so it goes.
As the COVID-19 death toll tops 67,000 (a government statistic, so likely a conservative tally), we pass grim milestone after grim milestone. In less than two months, we’ve surpassed the body count in the Vietnam War. We have endured the human loss of a Sept. 11 attack every other day.
Yet, we’re divided as a nation over whether we have it.
Last week, The Washington Times blasted a front page headline: Coronavirus hype biggest political hoax in history. The conservative paper will surely point out that it used the word “hype” with hoax. But do we really believe today’s American reader will get the nuance?
Consider: Dozens of cell towers were set ablaze a few weeks ago after a conspiracy theory conjured that COVID was caused by 5G transmissions. According to the Pew Research group, nearly one in four believe the virus is a man-made contagion.
Which brings us to another scaling back in The Great Thinning: Our view of medicine.
Just look at the all-star roster of charlatans to emerge in the pandemic:
- Dr. Phil
Dr. Awshucks put his loafer in his mouth with this proclamation: “The fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that, but yet we’re doing it for this?”
Phil, who has no doctor’s licence, probably meant to say 3,600 pool deaths a year, which is about the national average. And you can’t catch an automobile accident.
- Dr. Oz
The perfectly-named Fox favorite said the idea of reopening schools was “an appetizing opportunity” in light of an article in a medical journal “arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 percent in terms of total mortality.” “We need our mojo back,” he told Sean Hannity.
Someone wants to be in a new Austin Powers movie. And what do you mean “appetizing?” Is that really the verb you want to use for schoolchildren?
- Dr. Drew
The former Celebrity Rehab host called COVID “way less serious than influenza;” referred to the pandemic as “a press-induced panic;” said “the flu virus in this country is vastly more consequential” and compared the probability of dying from the disease to being “hit by an asteroid.”
He retracted every statement.
And then there’s Dr. Bone Spur. The Pumpkin-in-Chief has been urging states to get back to work since we began keeling over, and his administration eased stay at home orders nationwide, lifting restrictions on everything from beaches to bowling alleys this weekend.
Maybe the timing is right. Maybe the summer will shoo coronavirus.
This much is clear: Darwin will take it from here. Because we’ve turned belief in him into an ideology.
Exhibits A and B: Gary Lenius and his wife Wanda. The couple ingested chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleaner, thinking it was the chemical Trump had championed for weeks in the virus fight.
Gary, a retired mechanical engineer living in Arizona, died in March and his wife was left in critical condition after ingesting the toxic chemical. Wanda told reporters that she and her husband took a teaspoon of fish tank cleaner, mixing it with soda, hoping it would protect them from contracting the coronavirus.
“We were afraid we were getting sick,” she said. “We were getting really worried. We saw his [Trump’s] press conference. It was on a lot, actually. Trump kept saying it was pretty much a cure.”
To which the HB would like to offer this public service tip: If you are considering ingesting or injecting any cleanser or cleaning chemicals into your body to fight COVID, by all means go ahead. You will do much more damage in a voting both than you will at your own aquarium. It’s a free country; you have the right to be wrong.
As do the protesters in that top photo, who stormed the Michigan Capitol to rail against…bacteria? Empty nail salons? It’s ironic that the same group that challenges the theory of evolution is now tossing around terms like “herd immunity.”
I’m not sure who they’re going to yell at when the governor lifts the state of emergency order because, at this point, who is ready wade back into those waters? Even if we do blow up the shark, we’ve left a lot of blood in the sea. You can’t yell an economy back into action.
Which is where Darwin steps in. As many of us celebrate gathering in malls or flocking to movie theaters again, the weaker of us may die off — including those who were in no rush to re-enter the currents to begin with.
So it goes. Those are the terms of use of personhood; you either work with science, or for it.
