Moral Panics, Mass Hysteria, & COVID, Oh My!!!
Moral Panics, Mass Hysteria, & COVID, Oh My!!!
Idiotic Moral Panics and Hysterical Hysterias
I’m old enough to have lived through more than a couple of moral panics and mass hysterias. In hindsight, most of them are so ridiculous that they are hilarious. Let’s look at some of the classics from the last four decades or so.
Lipstick Parties / Friendship Bracelets
As I recall this one came out some time in the 1990’s. Basically, the gist was that middle schools were supposedly filled to the brim with super sexually active children who had developed a bit of a code. The girls would wear different color friendship bracelets or lipstick to indicate to the boys which sexual acts they were experienced in and which ones they would do.
The other version of the story was that parties were being held where girls, wearing different color lipstick, would perform fellatio on several boys and boys would receive fellatio from several girls, leaving different colored lipstick as proof of their exploits. Or they would give the boy one of their friendship bracelets and he would be able to show his friends how many he had.
Obviously this was the ridiculous hormone induced fantasy of some moron 13 year old boy and never took place. Frankly, it’s hilarious that anyone ever actually took it seriously. But some girl or some teacher overheard a couple of pimple faced little shits talking about it and panic ensued. Concerned mothers everywhere were on the lookout for the legion of lipsticked tween whores out there ruining their boys. HA! If only it were true…
Tide Pods
Only a few years ago children everywhere were supposedly eating Tide Pods. Interestingly enough, a few moron kids actually did record themselves performing this Nobel laureate level research and got a mouth full of soap for their trouble.
It wasn’t widespread and while there were videos of dumbasses doing this, almost every kid who ever saw them responded by laughing at the idiots. But make no mistake, parents were panicked about it. In New York State a bill was introduced to actually ban Tide Pods. It didn’t pass.
Most of the rest of the world responded by saying, “If you are dumb enough to eat it, eat it. We have too many stupid people anyway. I hope it at least makes you sterile.”
Satanic Messages In The Music
This one is as old as rock and roll. The Beatles, Black Sabbath, The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Marylin Manson, Twisted Sister, Metallica, Nirvana... you name the band and I’ll show you the rumor that there are Satanic messages in the music.
When I was a kid, I remember hanging out with a friend and spinning his Led Zeppelin record backwards to try and catch the message in Stairway. All I heard was gibberish… but I guess it could have been a prayer to Ba’al. Either way, I’m pretty sure neither one of us ever entered a cult over it.
Others
Some others were not as funny. Sometimes people went to jail or were ostracized from their communities.
The repressed memory movement of the 1980’s and 1990’s
Lead many people to believe they were sexually molested and just blocked out the memories or forgot about it. Families were ripped apart. Some people went to prison for things that never happened.
The several panics about organized groups of adults molesting children
Gays intentionally giving straight people AIDS
One of my personal favorites. Apparently gay people would carry needles full of AIDSy blood and inject it into unsuspecting passers by. Why? Because they are gay… duh. (This obviously never took place)
Gays were also apparently recruiting children by the hundreds… remember? Hey kids! Come join the homosexual lifestyle! Disappoint your parents! Have no friends! Get kicked out! You’ll love it! LOL
Violent video games, movies, or music leading to mass shootings
I think about everyone my age was told about the “white van” and the guy who would kidnap you and take you away. He wasn’t real either.
Fun Trip Down Memory Lane… But So What?
The point is pretty simple. While we look back on these panics as mostly funny, sometimes sad, sometimes scary, they were all started by good people with real concerns. None of these panics fell out of the ether. They were all based in some kind of real world, legitimate concern.
For example, the lipstick party panic came out of the fact that in the 1980’s and 1990’s younger and younger teens were learning about sex. This was and remains a legitimate concern for parents. It’s easy to see how such a story could scare some parents and take on a life of its own.
Rock and roll and increasingly transgressive music came about at the same time as traditional values were being challenged by the youth. It seems pretty obvious that the music was a symptom of the change, not its agent.
The repressed memory and child abuse craze came about around the time that more and more women were working outside the home and weren’t there during the day to watch over their children. Add that to the fact is that far too many children are actually abused by family members and other trusted men in society, once an accusation got made, leading questions and crazy assumptions followed.
About the time the gay panic stuff hit, people were coming out and being honest about themselves much more than ever before. It wasn’t just in a few select big cities anymore… all of a sudden, homosexuals seemed to be everywhere. This all happened right about the time (and maybe because) AIDS was killing a lot of people. Stories of gay boogie men infecting innocent straight people seems to be a pretty easy jump for the normal American citizen at that time.
The “stranger danger” craze was in response to a very rare, but very real phenomenon, a stranger kidnapping a child from school. Of course that would scare the hell out of a parent.
Get to the Point, Virgil
COVID. The point is COVID, dear reader. What do all these things and COVID have in common? Well, let’s see.
Extreme overreaction to a real, but manageable problem - √
News media making the problem worse though panic inducing reporting - √
A lack of understanding about the actual statistical dangers by the general public - √
A refusal to look at alternate explanations or solutions - √
An attitude of us vs them leading to tribalism - √
The need to look to flawed “experts” with their own agendas for direction - √
Overreaction by government - √
I really could go on…
We are in the grips of a mass hysteria over COVID. It is damaging and it needs to stop.
But Virgil, COVID is real.
So are slutty middle schoolers… That doesn’t mean we should make all the kids wear mittens to bed. There are reasonable responses to legitimate concerns. Then there is what we have been doing about COVID, which is the public health version of making a boy wear mittens to bed. It’s annoying, embarrassing, overprotective, and doesn’t actually work.
Here’s a question for you: Does having people work from home actually slow or stop the spread of COVID in any measurable way at this point?
The answer is obviously no. People still go out. They still get groceries. They still go to Home Depot. They still eat, drink, and hang out with friends. They still go on vacations. They still get COVID. Yet here we are… Massive offices still mostly empty because idiots are afraid. (And no, it’s neither good for employees or companies to have a remote workforce)
Let’s take a look at the new strain, Omicron. From what we know, a bunch of people in South Africa had mild COVID cases that included a new variant of the virus. There is zero evidence that it is any more dangerous than the other strains. We think the vaccine is as effective against it as the other strains… meaning it’s harder to get, and the chances hospitalization or death are very low.
But what did we do? New York State has declared a state of emergency, despite having zero cases. Employers are putting off coming back to the office. Governments are talking about lockdowns. New travel bans are instituted to and from Africa, despite the Southern border of the US being wide open and virtually undefended.
The news media jumps on the story for their own heroin fix of clicks and views. Fauci gives his normal report of gloom and death. The CEO of Moderna says we may need a new vaccine and laughs while his stock price skyrockets. And anyone who points that out is shouted down or ignored by the intelligencia who are so certain they are smarter than the rest of us.
The COVID neurotic among us hunker down even more, masks are donned, and common sense is tossed right out the damn window. All over nothing, literally nothing.
Mittens. In. Bed.
Okay, Okay, I Get It. So What Should We Do?
Mass hysterias end when people realize they are in one. Sometimes it just takes a rational person to point out that they are acting illogically, e.g. just playing Crazy Train backwards and showing them there is no message there. Sometimes a person’s belief in the hysteria goes deeper than that and begins to be connected to who they are as a person or how they self-identify. These cases are harder.
We have seen that through the COVID hysteria. People began to connect their COVID behavior with their personalities, with their morality, and their sense of self.
This first started manifesting itself with the mask. Are you an extreme masker? Do you wear one alone in a car so that others see you with it on? Do you jog in mask? Or, on the other side of the coin, do you refuse to wear a mask, no matter the circumstances? Are you the one who is going to make a scene at the airport because you just refuse to put it on? Will you actually refuse to go into a business if they require it?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you have let the mask become part of your identity. It’s not. It’s just a stupid mask. It probably doesn’t do anything and it’s certainly not worth an argument one way or the other.
The vaccine is another example. I don’t care if you are vaccinated or unvaccinated. It’s really none of my business. I am vaccinated, but that’s also none of your business. Having said that, do you get off on telling people your vax status? Do you consider your status (vaxxed or not) a moral virtue? If the answer is yes, you have allowed that to become part of your identity.
To fix that, you have to remind yourself that COVID is just a virus. You are a free adult American human being. You have always had a right to determine your own healthcare protocols and there is nothing different about this. Do what you think is right and understand that this is no different than a million other banal decisions you make every day. It’s not moral or immoral and doesn’t really say anything about your intellect. There are good arguments for and against pretty much all the COVID protocols, so do what you want. I assure you that I will.
I Still Don’t Think This Is Mass Hysteria. So Many People Have Died.
Fair point. Many people have died from COVID. However, otherwise healthy people who receive treatment for COVID are not still dying. (You really have to dig into this data. Almost all sources make this hard to understand… but the long and the short of this and many other sources I checked is that vaccinated people who are dying of COVID are already very sick.)
Monoclonal Antibodies are an effective treatment. The vaccine is effective against hospitalization and death. The selfless (sarcasm) folks at Pfizer and Moderna have a treatment pill in trials now that looks promising.
The reality is that COVID is no longer dangerous for the vast majority of the American public. It is still dangerous for those who are unvaccinated with pre-existing conditions including obesity, old age, immunocompromised people, etc… But it’s not particularly dangerous if those people are vaccinated.
By the way, in the US over 95% of people in the “vulnerable” category are vaccinated. The remainder have their own reasons for not getting the poke. Some might be allergic. Some might be Q-Anon. It’s very much none of our business.
The fact is that while COVID continues to exist and new cases spike and wane, the death rate is continually decreasing. (About 1.6% in the US across the board. Much less for vaccinated and younger people). At this point, if you are not in an “at risk” category, take basic prophylactic steps (the vaccine, general good health practices, exercise, vitamins) and then get infected, then use the proper treatments… your chance of going to the hospital or dying is virtually zero.
Therefore, if you are still afraid of this thing, you have either refused the basic preventative steps, refused the treatments, or are taking part in a mass hysteria.
We need you to stop doing that. It’s killing us. Let’s all just decide to end this irrational behavior and reenter the world… I heard the kids are doing something dumb again, let’s panic about that instead.
Non Sequitur
This Boebert woman is as dumb as AOC and only half as hot. Fricken Republicans, man. I love you guys… but let’s toss this one to the wolves. We’ve got enough bobbleheads.
Also, the newsletter has a new name. It’s now called Line of Fire.
Happy Saturday all!
—V