Social media vs. the fake  “mainstream” media

In many previous articles, I’ve commentated on how social media was taking over from the once “mainstream” media who are constantly pushing out fake/biased news at us.

But in an interesting development the once mainstream media are for once having the luxury of being briefed directly by health experts – who can’t themselves be bothered to use social media. So, at this time they have at least that advantage over social media. Not that the fake media have anything more to say than the social media, but this is clearly a new dynamic. (if you wonder why I call the “mainstream” media, fake – just look at how they repressed news about such incidents as the year long riots in France or how they covered the brexit celebrations).

But as before, if you want to know what is really going on with coronavirus, you have to go to social media and here is one good example:

This is important, because social media has the view that this pandemic cannot be controlled. In contrast to the fake news media which appear to have been told by government to give out the message by their medics/economists that it can. I’m not sure if they are intentionally lying or are just living in cloud cuckooland, but when we get the pandemic hitting, this will be another erosion of the trust of those who trust the fake news media. That has an indirect impact on politics, but that impact is very strong and will tend to undermine parties like the Tories.

I also thing the fake media will come out of this very badly. Because when looking back it will be obvious that we should have closed borders AND massively increased bed numbers as they had to AND WAS REPORTED by the fake news. But, despite reporting it was necessary in China, none of the fake news made the connection that it had to be done here!

Heads will roll

One easy thing to predict is that heads will roll. We’ve had months of warning that CV was coming out way, yet it appears that not a single extra acute bed has been secured in that time. S.Korea only has 3000 cases and already its health system cannot cope. There’s no way our NHS will cope with even a fraction of the demand. Unfortunately, the difference between a “manageable” number of cases and total disaster is something as simple as closing schools before CV is widely prevalent. So, the chances of an order of magnitude more patients needing beds and beds being available (even if all routine surgery is cancelled) is extremely high – or v.likely and extremely damaging with large loss of life.

It didn’t need a major cockup to get several orders more demand on the NHS than predicted. And this appears to be what is likely. Therefore, even if leaders have done precisely what they were advised to do by medics, the shere scale of this crisis will force them out of office. However, these “heads” will be just scapegoats to try to quell public anger rather than and real political change.

Political Change

But I do think there will be fundamental change as a result of this pandemic.

In some ways interest in environmentalism will increase. Particularly my long-term concern of growing anti-biotic immunity caused by feeding low dosage anti-biotics to farm animals as growth promoters. But note, no major eco-nutter organisation has been pushing this. That, I think, is because these eco-nutter corps are now purely and simple money making scams who look for big corporate businesses who can be blackmailed by creating scares.

So, bizarrely, whilst interest in environmentalism grows, it is possible that will not be to the advantage of the big eco-nutter corps who focussed on non-issues like the climate and not on real issues like infectious diseases.

Obviously if a lot of older people die, then a lot of more conservative voters die, and I’ve already seen Scottish gnats rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of “winning a referendum”. However, what these kids don’t understand, is that a crisis like this tends to age the whole population and force them to grow up and have more mature views. So, perversely, whilst conservative voters may die, the population as a whole should become more conservative – but that doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in the Tory vote.

Becasue, on the other hand – health, as in actually having a health service and not just higher wages for unionised health workers (as is Labour’s aim), will become far more important. Particularly if the UK death rate approaches the million mark – which will mean that most people will personally know someone who died and probably a number who died. And because as much as half of these could have been saved by preparing beds and things like shutting borders, it is going to be seen as a preventable health “massacre”.

So, I can see politics being pulled two ways at the same time. More “socialist” in the sense of better health care, but simultaneously “more conservative” in terms of a more mature attitude from the public and perhaps a far more down to earth approach to issues like environmentalism. And also I suspect “free thinkers” will be more highly valued in future, because it is the group think on how CV could be “contained” that got us into this mess.

So, interest in fake scares like “plastics” & “climate” will plummet to be replaced with desire to do something about real issues like “anti-biotic immunity.  People will be more conservative and mature in their views, but also more in favour of good health care. And “groupthink” campaigns will likely get short shrift in future.

Global recession

I’ve avoided commenting on the global recession, but, if as I’m expecting, CV is not stopped by the lack-lustre “measures” currently in place, then I expect whole areas to be shut down, trade & economic activity to dry up GLOBALLY and a global recession is certain. Also many businesses will be hit as older – key staff either die – or decide to retire early (why waste what life you have left?)

However, it could be a very odd “recession”. Because almost as soon as we go into recession, we may find that those inheriting wealth from older people who died, go on a bit of a spending spree (why save money for decades in the future, when we could all be wiped out by another pandemic in a few years time). On the other hand, people’s views could turn very conservative as in “we need to have something put aside just in case this happens again”.

What is easy to predict is that it will have a profound effect on the global economy, what I would not like to predict is what that means in detail.

Further undermining of “experts”

Like Brexit, where the “experts” predicted UK recession the moment we voted to leave, and like climate where the experts predicted their own homes would be under water by now (e.g. Al Gore), so the medics supposedly predicting what CV would do and advising government are almost certainly wrong (again). To be frank, I tried to speak to one of these “experts” about 5 weeks ago. And the response I got was a condenscending “go away, all you need do is wash your hands and listen to us experts” (I paraphrase). Not only did they get their advice wrong, but they ignored other people. And unlike previous failures, when the “experts” no doubt hid their failures under the carpet using a complient political elite and fake-news media colluding to deny the truth, today, social media will not let them get away with that. And if we get to of the order a million dead of whom a large proportion could have been saved if the “experts” hadn’t been such idiots, …. I doubt the public will put much faith in experts in future (especially if they are doing prison time).

Conclusion

CV comes at a crucial point in the develpment of the post-internet society which is changing from one run by those like newspaper barons, to one where social media has far more impact. That change has been slow, but I think CV may precipitate a phase of more rapid change. So, I suggest CV will lead to one of the most profound changes in politics, but which is not in a way that fits on the one-dimensional left-right scale used by the fake news media. Indeed, I can see the fake news media suffering greatly … but maybe not. Maybe, the outcome will be that the public are extremely angry for some behaviours … but simultaneously extremely grateful for other behaviours, or all kinds of people from newspapers, to politicians, to medics, to social media.

To put it simply, if I’m still alive then, in a years time I will be in a much better position to “predict” the change, but today all I can say is that there will be change.