For other COVID posts, visit my Quarantine blog.
In early May while federal and academic models were predicting the COVID crisis would extend into August, I predicted the crisis would end on June 7th. It was a gutsy call since declaring the crisis over has little to do with how many people become infected or die. Since then I’ve published numerous blogs on how we’ll know the crisis has ended; metrics that include the daily death count dipping below some threshold, the press getting bored, Americans reaching their limit of anger and exhaustion, and most important, politicians devising an exit strategy allowing them to escape culpability for mishandling this crisis.
While I don’t usually watch network news, I briefly tuned in last night to learn what’s going on with the riots. I don’t know how anyone can watch live TV, the five minutes of commercials for two minutes of news drove me crazy. I did however win a five dollar bet when the network announced that Floyd had COVID. While they never connected the dots, you can already hear attorney’s arguing that between Floyd’s fentanyl addiction and having COVID, dying at the precise moment someone had a knee on his neck is just coincidence. For the most part the riots are uninteresting, except ignorant rioters who don’t understand the roles of state and federal government are entertaining as is watching overwhelmed mayors muddle through their manic incompetency.
I predicted the crisis would be over June 7th, because the data and my COVID model indicated things are winding down faster than experts predicted, and the last four months has taught me to disregard everything the experts say. In early May I had no inkling Senate treason hearings would be underway in June, nor could I foresee the horrific string of events that would unravel the nation. I did however, predict there would be catalysts.
One driver behind my prediction was the media’s increasing level of absurdity required to maintain the panic and fear that held us captive for so long. In movies, they call it “jumping the shark,” which means that something once-good, has become so absurd and dragged on so long it’s crossed over into useless stupidity. This expression originated from the last season of Happy Days when in one episode, Fonzy jumps over a shark water-skiing.
A similar expression is “nuking the fridge,” which comes from the last Indiana Jones movie where Indy survives a nuclear detonation by hiding in a refrigerator. This expression is used to denote the point at which a story becomes ridiculously unbelievable. In early May, I realized that in addition to what the data was showing, the behavior of politicians and the media were clear indicators they were jumping the shark while nuking the fridge.
State governments whine the federal government’s not doing enough. The federal government calls governors weak and ineffective. State governors chastise city mayors threatening to have them removed. City mayors go to war with their police departments while ordering them not to arrest violent rioters. Police accuse mayors of being dangerously irrational for releasing violent rioters without bail. Rioters falsely claim all cops are corrupt while organizing radical militia to kill cops. Angry rioters are so ignorantly misinformed they don’t seem to know who they’re angry at or why. Clearly we have jumped the shark.
The media, desperate to be relevant, promotes COVID models that project hundreds of thousands will die if we don’t continue to cower in fear. They treat every CDC report as gospel, while ignoring the fact that the medical profession intentionally corrupts data. They invent and then sensationalize a COVID caused syndrome that’s killing kids after three children die from Kawasaki disease. They spin up a comic-like character dubbed “superspreader” who’s bent on killing us all with great malice unless we deploy his kryptonite (i.e., wearing facemasks forever). The media has negligently nuked the fridge.
On June 7th I will lay out my arguments for why the COVID crisis is over. As a tease, I’ll point out that FOX news, that last media bastion for truth, integrity, and the American way, recently stopped reporting daily COVID statistics. For months they ran a daily segment highlighting how many people were infected and dead. They ended that segment last week without explanation.
