Corona Virus - There needs to be a Villain

 

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  A Villain:   

According to Webster's dictionary, a villain is described - among other things as: "one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty".

By Davmandy at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0,
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So I've heard everything about this Corona Virus Pandemic, from "It's an alien plot" (yes they actually said outer space aliens!) to Xenophobes saying "China started this on purpose to destroy the West".  Even some Zeusophobies blamed God for all of this - likening it to the plagues in Egypt thousands of years ago.
The truth is that humans crave control - we need a villain.  We want to control our budgets, control our families and children, control our lives, but a virus - such as what we are now facing - can't be controlled by most of the population, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.
So we create scapegoats, find conspiracies, create reasons for all of this.  We blame our leaders for letting it get out-of-hand.  We blame other leaders for not acting fast enough. Still others have come up with whole conspiracy theories.
We need these to find blame, otherwise we feel like we can't do anything.
It's like being stuck in a low paying dead-end job, with rent to pay, food to buy and not being able to see that you need to leave the job for a bigger, brighter future.
It's like being in the middle of a lake, too far to swim to shore, with only your life jacket as a friend, then something swims by and brushes your leg!
Humans do not like the feeling of helplessness - we need to be able to fix things.

We are control freaks

By Nikodem Nijaki - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
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So we create and invent ideas and conspiracies. We look at numbers and details, put 2 and 2 together - and even if the numbers end up at 5, we adjust the numbers to be 4 and assume we have just stumbled upon a hidden - deep dark truth - defacto!!!
In real science they don't start with the solution, they start with the problem and work towards the solution.  If the numbers don't add up to their specific goal, they go back and start again, looking at different alternatives.
Conspiracy theorists, those looking for a reason why this is happening, start with the solution and find details or 'facts' that fit their equation, ignoring all the other possible answers or outcomes.

Here are some facts - but will they satisfy the conspiracy theorists?

By Metropolitan - Map base: BlankMap-World-Microstates.svgData:
WHO daily situation reports. Animated GIF:
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The virus started in China, spread to other parts of the oriental world and then west to parts of Europe and the Mediterranean.  China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan have all done great jobs slowing the pandemic.  Other Eastern countries have also done a decent job, but Italy, Spain and some other European countries were not as prepared for this, and it spread before they had a chance to battle the virus.
Some countries were simply not convinced it could cross their borders and did little until it was too late. Other politicians felt it was political suicide to close the country down and it would kill their economy.
Conspiracy theorists claim the Chinese invented the virus to help lower their population and then attack the West. They show numbers and dates and ask why so low infections or deaths in the East, but really bad in the Mediterranean and West?  It must be a conspiracy!
What they don't understand is that China is the biggest trading partner to the USA and Canada's second biggest.  Lack of trade (read commerce) means less cash flow for China.  Allowing your population to get sick and some to die, plus filling your hospitals with sick people is overall bad for their economy.  
China thrives on their workforce.  Yes they are underpaid, but their good and services also cost less.  Yes they do a lot of things we don't like, but killing their workforce, taxpayers and economy all in one shot (?) - hmmmm not great for business or any nation's economy.  The fact is that Chinese people take pride in their hard work, their dedication, their economy and their families.

Oh, but wait - there's more.

Yes, some people actually claim there is no virus, that it's entirely media made.  They claim the hospitals are empty, no one is there, that doctors and nurses are not getting sick, that the whole thing is media fake news (mostly blaming the Democrats in the USA - claiming it is a way of making Donald Trump look bad. (Like he needs help looking bad!)
That's right - apparently this whole thing is a made-up fake virus, meant to control the population, make them think Trump is a bad guy and ensure he doesn't get re-elected.
Think about it for a second. First he is slammed in the media (weekly) for no reason, then his acting like a spoiled brat towards the media at almost every media scrum is also fake news, and all his sexual innuendos ("grab her in the ......") is just leftist attempts at discrediting him.  So this must be the last gasp the Democrats have at making Trump look like all he cares about is money!
Now they want people to get out on the streets with their video cameras, and video these so called empty hospitals.  Hospitals with no lineups waiting to get inside, with empty waiting rooms and doctors rolling around in thousands of face masks and having wild parties using respirators or ventilators for fun.
Seriously do these people not realize that our hospitals (in Canada) don't keep highly contagious people sitting in waiting rooms, or lined up at the front doors? 
Do they not realize that the hallways are not lined with people or the dead because we give the sick their own isolated rooms and bring the deceased to the morgue?
To avoid cross contamination and to avoid spreading the virus, people are not crowded together in hospital waiting rooms.  There are no line ups because emergency vehicles have a private entrance, and people are ushered away from public areas as soon as they get into the hospital.
And to my American cousins, many of the sick can't afford your outrageous medical costs, so they are staying at home and suffering through this and possibly dying alone.

Here's the truth

We need to find a bad-guy, a villain, a conspiracy to wrap our minds around and say "it's their fault".
Without these - we are at the mercy of our own bodies and a virus we can't see, smell, touch, hear or feel. We are powerless. We have no control. We are simply humans living in a world that we don't own and have yet to fully understand.
It's okay to let go of the fault finding mission.  It's okay to NOT blame every politician on the continent.  None of them were alive when the last Epidemic hit in 1919, and none of them had the experience needed to control this.  Most have done the best they could.  Some are thinking a little less about their people and more about their numbers.  Some are thinking the opposite.
Let it go.  Follow the suggested routine and guidelines and eventually this will end.

Here is a really good take on what I'm saying - read it yourself.