Serious underlying rubbish
So, now seven people have died in the UK from swine flu. And seven times the mainstream media have duly repeated the government’s contention that the dead suffered from ’serious underlying health problems’. The clear implication is, were it not for these serious problems, the dead wouldn’t have died.
Having heard the same thing over and over, though, one could be forgiven for becoming suspicious.
When a government says the same line over and over, they’re trying to influence the way you think. And when the press repeat that line without investigating it, that’s your propaganda machine, right there.
Ministry of Disinformation
Propaganda. Not a word we’re used to seeing in the modern age, but these are interesting times.
Britain is ‘well placed’ to survive the recession. Britain is ‘one of the most prepared countries in the world‘ to handle swine flu. The recession ‘started in America‘.
You heard those over and over and over again, right? Each one repeated by the government and the media blankly. Each one a little piece of propaganda.
The International Monetary Fund later said Britain was the worst positioned in Europe to survive the recession. Britain now has the most cases of swine flu in all of Europe. Among the most egregious sub-prime lenders were European banks including Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
Let’s get serious
The Centrist, no doubt like you, takes the word ’serious’ seriously. If you say a dead person had serious health problems, I tend to think, ‘Hmm, HIV positive? Terminal cancer? Multiple Sclerosis? Parkinsons Disease?’
Nah, how about asthma, diabetes or epilepsy? All rarely fatal, eminently treatable health conditions.
(And can somebody please tell the British press that the word ‘fit’ is as archaic as ’swoon’ and in its own way as wrong as ’spastic’? The modern term is ’seizure’.)
I know people with every single one of those mild health conditions, and I’ll bet you do too. I myself have asthma, which the government, through the National Health Service, has treated with an almost devil-may-care lack of concern, tossing me an inhaler when it first flared up a couple of years ago and telling me to let them know if I was ‘worried’ about it.
Now I know that if I die of swine flu, the government will use my asthma to explain it, as part of its propaganda, so that you can continue to think swine flu is just a bad cold. They’ll put on their sad faces, look moist-eyed at the BBC camera and talk about my serious health problems.
Let me tell you now: my asthma is mild. It should never, ever kill me. I have had flu several times and survived just fine. I’m just a bit of a hypochondriac, really. Not terminal. Not serious. Ought to live.
Here’s the truth
The government’s inability to get a handle on swine flu, it’s failure to take it seriously enough and to properly educate the population about it, it’s failure to encourage self-quarantining as other countries have, the fact that it has not encouraged people to work from home and the fact that it did not ask them to stay out of crowded places, allowed the virus to spread out of control.
Because of all of that, those seven vulnerable people caught the virus through no fault of their own, and now they’re dead.
Rest in peace
Increasingly there are murmurs outside of the mainstream press that this government doesn’t understand how epidemics work.
But I believe it’s more callous and soul-chilling than that. I think the government doesn’t want you to know how serious the situation is, because then you might lose faith in them. You might support the Labour party even less than you already do. You might vote against them in the next election.
And that genuinely appears to be all that matters to them. Or at least, that’s what matters most.
So the propaganda machine swings into motion, and it keeps telling you everything’s Ok. You probably still think swine flu’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a mild flu or a bad cold. The young and healthy will be just fine. Right?
Who told you that?
The government and the press. And you believed them.
Did you know that swine flu disproportionately impacts the young and healthy? It’ll kill you if you’re old or ill, but it almost prefers to kill the young and healthy. The British government doesn’t want you to know that. You need to know that. Everything is not going to be Ok.
Google it
Again I say: Don’t believe this government. It’s scared. And scared, bad governments lie.
And don’t trust the mainstream press: it’s slow on the uptake.
Do your own research. And be careful out there.
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Jack on 07.07.2009
Centrist, you should have your own column. This more enlightening than anything I’ve read in the mainstream British media. Great stuff.