America's Paranoia Over COVID is Killing People Abroad

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If I had unlimited resources, I would gather a team to create a documentary film about all the fear around COVID. It wouldn't be to minimize the severity of the illness nor to ridicule those who are over the top with their concerns. (Some public, drive-in events require cars to be parked six feet apart.)

I would make it to point out something separate from the virus: This tendency we have to succumb to social movements of paranoia. The film would be to teach future generations, so they could spot this phenomenon and better avoid it. And it would be directed to "my people”—my culture, because this is unique to the white, Western world. You just don't see the hypervigilance regarding masks or social distancing in all of Africa or Latin America. East Asian cultures took extreme measures, but they did so swiftly and have largely moved on. We in the West are dragging this out month after month, fueled by this particular manifestation of this social tendency. There have been many in our past. In the 50s, there was a movement to out all the supposed subversive Communists in the country. Many were suspected by those always on the lookout for the people who were “against us”, who were “the enemy”. Today, we have our own “us vs. them” moral tribalism: those who are said to be listening to science and taking all precautions possible to avoid COVID vs. those who supposedly don’t care about science or the well-being of others. This exaggeration of the threat of this virus (not that it isn't serious, just that it's being exaggerated) has led to much unreasonableness. A reporter at the White House recently pressured the person interviewed to wear a mask despite him being ten feet away. The NY Times ran a story about an otherwise-healthy, 29-year-old man who “died of the novel coronavirus.” This was right in the headline. What wasn’t: that the medical examiner’s report stated the cause of death was an overdose of opiates, with the victim’s “symptomatic COVID-19 infection contributing to his death.” That the most venerated news media in America would allow this movement to pressure them to warp reality reveals the movement’s scope and weight.

So, a film examining this paranoia would be helpful. In the case of COVID, avoiding this social phenomenon would have been life-saving. The fear around it has pressured unnecessary shutdowns of social and business and educational activity, reducing standards of living for many of the poorest Americans. And abroad, millions are being hit much harder. This is because the West is, by and large, the wealth producing engine of the world. Some have even called the West "overdeveloped". Our culture generates a lot of money. And it makes its way to less economically developed places—whether through remittances (money sent back to home countries), foreign aid, tourism, or just all the donating from nonprofits here. When these taps are turned off, millions around the world who've come to rely on this suffer and, consequently, many will now soon die of starvation, violence, disease, etc. (Side note: It's often said we in the West are responsible for conditions suffered elsewhere. This is true, but legacy concerns such as colonialism and commerce are only ever mentioned. Right now, right before our eyes, we have this clear, direct, and current example of the West affecting the rest of the world with immediately fatal consequence.) This is why I'd like to make this film. It would benefit humankind if we in West could avoid such fear-based social movements.
Originally posted here: https://hive.blog/america/@fedoraonmyhead/america-s-paranoia-over-covid-is-killing-people-abroad