Long Denalism & The Stigma of Cowardice
Long Denalism & The Stigma of Cowardice
Unqualified Laptop Classholes Are At It Again? Wow!
Let us role-play for a moment. You are now a battalion commander, in the face of an oncoming apocalyptic threat that refuses to surrender, nor negotiate.
There are two competing voices on how to proceed. Do you listen to the Right Fist, a handful of rank climbing groupies desperate to forward their own careers, and wait for Upper Echelon to give you the “perfect” orders? Or do you listen to the Left Fist, throw smoke, and singlehandedly charge two S.S. Battalions singlehandedly, knowing you have a full company of soldiers at your back? Or, do you…
…Do you listen to the “experts” that the Trump Administration just entertained, who insisted on letting the viral menace achieve “herd immunity” by ravaging Western Europe, or do you simply charge the levee & start eliminating the enemy?
Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kuldorrf of the Koch-funded Great Barrington Declaration sat on their couch in 2020 whilst insisting on throwing countless Americans to their pointless deaths, long before a vaccine was available.
Many privileged “advisors” throughout history thought you could burn out fascism by simply giving the thugs whatever territory they desired, including the British Empire’s Neville Chamberlin and many Americans who held Nazi rallies, including one in Madison Square Garden, circa 1939.
Thankfully, they’re all dead now. Including even Adolf Hitler, who was famously driven to self-harm. Was it the meth? Who knows!
Tragically, this leaves us a whole new class of self-proclaimed faux “experts” begging to repeat these same moronic mistakes for their own personal profit & glory.
So, who would you rather trust about a new deadly virus and the disabling condition it can cause? A physician-scientist researcher like Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and head of research and development service at the U.S. Veterans Affairs - a healthcare system which covers several million Americans?
Or would you rather listen to a libertarian crypto-loving Substack poster like Glenn Greenwald, who has never opened a medical textbook in his life, much less donned a pair of scrubs, treated a patient, or run a single lab, much less an RCT?
Any layman off the street would tell you the former is obviously much more trustworthy than the latter - unfortunately, the rotting structure of our media ecosystem means the unqualified latter has far more reach and influencer than the actual scientist. In an extensive profile from Outlook Magazine, Ziyad states:
“Long COVID is leaving a legacy of chronic diseases,” Al-Aly said. “Health systems and governments need to be prepared for the long-lasting consequences for patients, health systems, life expectancy and economic productivity. Addressing challenges posed by long COVID will require economic investments and a coordinated, long-term global response strategy. So far, that is lacking.”
Now, you don’t have to take Ziyad’s word for it. With extensive research published in outlets such as Nature, and over 130 works according to ORCiD, he’s put an incredible amount of time and effort into understanding SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, and post-infection complications & disabilities that fall under the umbrella of “Long COVID.”
You can do the reading yourself and learn a great deal about where the latest research is leading us. On the other hand, you could make a public display your gamified social media clout-chasing crusade in the name of delusional contrarianism, emboldened by years of chronic incorrectness about medical science, like Substack poster Glenn Greenwald just did:
The quotation marks are an intentional choice - as Glenn is boldly declaring, with zero medical or scientific expertise, linking to an article from an unqualified Substack grifter that actually, Long COVID is just “mental illness,” caused by “liberal society.”
For someone who had such an impressive record of investigative journalism under his belt, it’s incredibly unbecoming for Glenn Greenwald to uncritically boost a terrible article in which freelance writer and not a doctor Gurwinder Bhogal boldly proclaims “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” is the magical solution for this post-viral “mental illness.” Gurwinder Bhogal boldly declares, with zero medical knowledge or expertise, that: “Long Covid sufferers are mistaking psychological distress for the side-effects of a viral infection.” Gurwinder provides no evidence for this claim.
Apologies to Doc Howie for stealing your gimmick. Your check is in the mail.
This is purely unserious, right-wing propaganda - claiming that “Progressives” and “liberalism” is causing mental illness in those hysterical women, unlike us serious, extremely mentally healthy & very strong-minded serious adult men. What you’re actually seeing is shallow insecurity resulting from rightoid goblins who have developed a clout-chasing need for positive feedback loops plugging a dangerous and delusional gamified social media fantasy utterly detached from reality:
That somehow SARS-CoV-2 is actually just a harmless, happy little bug, a literal cartoon even. All of the tens of millions of dead and disabled were “actually” because of vaccines, public health, and hey, it was only those with “comorbidities” who died.
Disposable people, in their eyes, the same eugenic ideals the Nazis used to exterminate millions of people because of disability, race, political affiliation, gender identity, and sexual preference - mind you, Glenn Greenwald is an openly gay man.
It is a sign of pure moral and ethical weakness, to be in such denial of scientific reality, that you have to concoct elaborate fantasies that oh, it’s just hysterical women and transgender weirdos that are developing Long COVID, because liberalism - because facing the reality that you wasted years cheering on mass, repeated infections with a deadly & disabling virus that has killed millions and disabled many more, including countless children - might mean that you were wrong, horrifically wrong, and spread outright lies on social media to millions for personal profit, and you owe a great deal of apologies before making a quiet retirement from public life, forever.
Sadly, this intellectual virus has ripped through many public facing commentators, from UCSF’s Vinay Prasad, to pro-viral screecher Alex Berenson, to libertarian pundit Glenn Greenwald, to sex trafficker Andrew Tate, to Texas Tech University Medical Student Kevin Bass, to pro-viral Art Dealer Eli Klein, to Compact Magazine editor Geoff Shullenberger, who blamed Long COVID on PPE, to “liberal” streamer Destiny, to “Democratic Socialist” Natalie Shure who compared LC to Havana Syndrome, to establishment pundit Matthew Yglesias, who openly mocked and joked about it whilst suffering from an acute infection, stumbling around Manhattan & infecting others.
Intellectual weakness from a gaggle of spoiled brats with too much money, zero responsibility, and completely depraved of empathy. So committed to an elaborate fantasy, that even in the face of overwhelming medical evidence that Long COVID health complications and disability are caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus they’ve so recklessly shrugged off, these jagoffs insist on absurd explanations, from “mental illness",” to blaming PPE, to outright abusive denial. All while refusing to admit that a world of dedicated scientific researchers might just know a little bit more than some unqualified shmuck behind a keyboard, crackin' wise with zero responsibilities.
All of these shmucks, useful dickweeds in a larger billionaire political agenda against public health and the continued privatization of every aspect of our society - even down to public education, and the right of a child to grow up, and be a child, in a safe and constructive environment. Some of these “influencers” may have used to be respectful, even inspirational people - but now their endless infatuation with SARS-CoV-2 for personal profit & clout has damned them and their good reputations to be little more than footsoldiers for a rightoid billionaire crusade seeking to profit from a once-in-a-century crisis, at the price of hard-workin’ people’s endless suffering.
Now in the baking summer of 2023, we see a wave of fearmongering around "climate lockdowns" and any sort of public authority taking steps to protect its working class citizens from the sudden wave of catastrophic weather events caused by two centuries of smoking up dinosaur bones to enable reckless overconsumption by a few, off the bleeding backs of a global poor. Tragically, the latter are being forced to shoulder the burden of the wealthy's selfish excess, as said wealthy campaign to prevent any authority from putting an end to their charades.
Consider Long COVID denialism and the painful inability to admit that this thoughtless crusade towards "normalcy," as a warning shot off the bow for the coming wave of angry crusading against any sort of climate change mitigation or adaptation legislation. All because of vague notions around "liberty" or "freedom," no matter how many lives have to be tossed away to protect the luxury and comfort of a select few.
Of course, one of the consequences of letting climate change run rampant, is more pandemics like SARS-CoV-2. We're entering a time of grand calamity, and we need people to reject convenient fantasies, accepting the reality that lie in front of us.
We are out of time to play games and keep entertaining "alternative facts."
