When I speak of a hoax and The Virus, I don’t mean there isn’t in our population a pathogen identified loosely as COVID-19 or, as the “unwoke” might say, the Wuhan Flu. As with past respiratory diseases, it’s also dangerous to the vulnerable. But as data increasingly show — and as I and some others have been saying all along — this current situation is very different from past pandemics in one significant and deadly way: It’s not being treated as only a medical/health issue.

It’s being treated as a political issue.

And as the Soviet Union’s Lysenkoism demonstrated, politics kills science.

I recently dubbed the Wuhan Flu the “Wizard of Oz Virus” because its reputation greatly exceeds its power. This was evident long ago, too. We only had to look at the early data coming out on Italy and a certain quarantined cruise ship, after all.

While the following might have changed a bit over time, we heard early on that 99-plus percent of the Italian victims had comorbidities and that their average age was 79.5. Italy is also a graying nation, with 23 percent of the population in its most affected area (the north) more than 65 years old.

Additionally, Italy has a wanting health care system, and stories emerged about askew triage-oriented priorities causing certain elderly to be denied care. Italy’s economic ties with Beijing also meant there were direct flights from Wuhan and 100,000 Chinese working in its factories.

There are other differences, too. One I pointed out is that Italy has an “un-social-distancing” culture, with acquaintances engaging in a lot of touching, and personal space between them only two to three feet (vs. four in North America).

Then there was the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan’s coast in February and at one time had more than half the Wuhan virus cases outside of China. Of the 3,711 people on board, 712 (19.2 percent) contracted the disease and 13 (1.8 percent) died.

Yet note that this ship was called a disease incubator; the average age of those aboard was 58, with 33 percent over 70; and medical care was sub-par. Note, too, to illustrate the latter group’s (the elderly’s) vulnerability, that they were dying during a four-week stretch in 2018 at “a rate of 169 people a day [in the U.S.], or seven people per hour” of the common flu, reported the AARP.

In other words, there was never a reason to believe the Wuhan virus would transform America into Black Plague-ravaged medieval Europe. The Enemedia pretended to know this at one time, too.

Right after President Trump wisely announced his China travel ban (Jan. 31), the Enemedia, busy calling him “racist” for doing so, ran headlines such as this Feb. 1 Washington Post gem: “Get a grippe, America. The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now.”

It was also around this time that Nancy “Let ‘em Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi, Bolshevik Bill (de Blasio) and other leftist pols were encouraging New Yorkers and San Franciscans to visit their Chinatowns, as they played the race card. Now they criticize Trump for not doing more when they counseled doing less.

(Know, too, that Dr. Anthony Fauci said on TV on Feb. 29 that Americans didn’t need to change their behavior to combat the virus.)

But the Enemedia weren’t all wrong back then. Consider the following past flu pandemics, with the number of Americans dead accompanied by what that translates into today adjusted for population.

The Spanish Flu pandemic (1918-19) killed 675,000 Americans. Today: equates to a bit more than two million dead.

The “Asian Flu” pandemic of 1957 killed 116,000 Americans. Today: equates to approximately 223,000.

The “Hong Kong Flu” pandemic of 1968 killed at least 100,000 Americans. Today: equates to 164,915.

Thus far, the Wuhan virus has claimed approximately 63,000 Americans — if you can believe the allegedly exaggerated numbers our governments produce.

Moreover, each year the flu claims tens of thousands more U.S. victims, including 61,000 during the 2017-18 winter season and 358 children during 2009-10. (In contrast, there are three “unconfirmed” Wuhan virus pediatric deaths.) But we didn’t run around back then like a jack-booted Chicken Little trampling civil rights and economic fortunes, shutting down schools and complaining about naming the disease after its place of origin.

But, again, in those times disease wasn’t a political issue.

Now, of course, data are showing what cooler heads have long theorized: The Wuhan flu mortality rate may end up being similar to the flu’s; the doom-and-gloom computer-model projections were way off; lockdowns are deadlier than what they supposedly combat; perhaps 80-plus percent of the afflicted are asymptomatic or only mildly affected; the infection rate is far higher than most “experts” suspected; and as with the flu, going outside, living relatively normally and establishing herd immunity (while protecting the vulnerable) is the best way to eliminate the disease.

Yet the Enemedia and leftist politicians, far from correcting their mistakes, are doubling down on destructive policies. Given this, it’s time to examine how the Wuhan Flu was turned into the Wizard of Oz Virus.

                                                       Anatomy of a National Hysteria

How we got to where we are now is complex, as man’s events usually are, but here’s a summary:

• Back when the Democrats and their Enemedia were focused on impeachment, video was emerging from China of government thugs in hazmat suits forcibly extracting people from their homes and spraying down wide areas with disinfectant. (This reaction lends credence to the increasingly accepted thesis that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, mind you.)
• With the impeachment effort’s collapse, the Enemedia turned its attention to the pandemic. After first downplaying it and calling Trump xenophobic, they then began exaggerating it and calling him criminally negligent. They simultaneously commenced showing that alarming Chinese footage, along with reporting massive death in Italy (which also might have been exaggerated) and continually showing videos of coffins, from Italy and later N.Y.C.
• Hearing only the Enemedia horror stories and apocalyptic projections, Americans became terrified and panicked — and panicked people don’t make wise decisions. They are easy to control, though.
• The Enemedia’s malpractice was devastating. With polls showing up to 80 percent support for lockdowns because of it, it became politically impossible for officials to implement rational policy. Trump and the governors were likely terrified that they’d be blamed for every death if they didn’t “take action.”
• The pseudo-elites had and have incentive to keep the hoax going. The Enemedia know that if it bleeds, it leads, but they and the Democrats also wanted to damage Trump. Note that his strong economy has been crashed, and his popular rallies — central to his campaign effort — have been cancelled. Moreover, leftists have used the manufactured crisis to remove rights and advance their agenda, with some actually confessing this Machiavellian goal. Why, some rank-and-file leftists even admitted they’d prefer millions of Wuhan Flu deaths to Trump being re-elected.
• It doesn’t help that Trump is a known germaphobe counseled by apparently incompetent and/or corrupt officials such as Fauci and Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx.

And now those officials have formulated a standard for opening the economy that has been called “rigged” and that may be impossible to satisfy. This is despite the Wizard of Oz Virus narrative’s collapse, with a study showing lockdowns don’t work and it becoming clearer, by the day, that they’ll actually lead to more disease and death.

It would be nice to think that the malicious Machiavellians in media and politics will be held accountable for visiting one of American history’s greatest blunders upon us. But that appears just a dream. It’s lamentable, surely, and can make one understand why G.K. Chesterton once remarked, “It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”

   Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

Image credit: Insomnia Cured Here, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

Correction: Fauci spoke on TV Feb. 29, not Jan 29