Does Mr Reagan still believe coronavirus is a ‘hoax’ and an ‘overreaction?’
Right-wing YouTube host Mr Reagan, is essentially profiting off coronavirus dis-info — regardless of over 341,000 people contracting coronavirus and 14,700 deaths reported globally, as I write this.
He began his show, in a doggedly-practiced narrator voice, as BLM radicalization professor “Destiny” noted, charging that coronavirus COVID-19 is a ‘hoax,’ and an ‘overreaction.’
Mr Reagan managed to contradict himself within twenty seconds, “I noticed that a lot of left-wing blue check Twitter people, I think they’re called twits, I’ve noticed that a lot of twits have criticized conservatives recently for claiming that the coronavirus is a hoax. Let me be clear, nobody is claiming the corona virus is a hoax, it’s a real virus.”
He then gave a tortured clarification, as he praised himself for criticizing the President, “the hoax people are citing, is the alarmism of the mainstream media, the mainstream media has caused a global panic. Flights from Europe are canceled. I disagree with Trump on this one, people claim that Trump supporters never disagree with Trump, that’s not true, here’s an example right here. Many conservatives will disagree with me on this, but I think that this is an overreaction.”
Mr Reagan lamented the NBA postponing their season indefinitely, and Disney and Broadway for doing the same. “Everything is canceled.” He whined.
After speaking on the airline industry, oil prices, and the entire stock market crashing, he took aim at “CNN” and “mainstream media,” for manufacturing a hysteria.
“The coronavirus is not the Bubonic Plague, (nobody’s claimed that) its a flu, that we simply don’t have a vaccination for. Its a flu that might be a little bit more dangerous for older people, than the typical flu, but it’s the flu, and it’s nothing to get too worked up about. People are panicking. Now, there are a lot of different statistics floating around Facebook and Twitter — but let’s have a look at a few that I think are very critical.” He declared.
This is a preposterous statement, its universally accepted, that the coronavirus virus is particularly harmful to older people. As well as the immuno compromised.
The commentator showcased a series of statistics from Business Insider, which he disputed, irresponsibly claiming the fatality rate is not 3.6%, “that is actually wrong, the estimate that I saw was 1 percent.”
He failed to cite a source to back up his argument.
Bear in mind, each country’s fatality rate fluctuates, and the fatality rate is continually changing, as the number of tests climb up. Nevertheless, downplaying the risks of coronavirus, like Mr Reagan, is morally debauched.
Mr Reagan segued into how “every panic induced virus in the past thirty years has been deadlier than coronavirus,” then, of course, invoked former President Barack Obama to float a conspiracy theory about the media.
“Do you remember Obama being blamed for these viruses, or called a racist? No, in fact, there was no real panic at all. Why — because the media didn’t tell you to panic. They didn’t have a motivation to attack the president at that time, but if the economy crashes, and the quality of life in America drops they think that maybe they’ve got a shot at winning the presidential election in November. They don’t, but that’s their plan.”
Mr Reagan characterized pro-Trump troll Charlie Kirk’s tweet on coronavirus — which aged poorly — and is still up — as “valuable,” gushing that, “this is a great tweet.”
Mr Reagan declared: “This is the deaths, every single day, worldwide. The flu causes 1027 deaths world-wide, every single day, pneumonia 2,216 deaths, tuberculosis 3,000 deaths, coronavirus 56. Coronavirus is causing an average of 56 deaths every single day, I think that should put this all in perspective, and as I said current estimates suggest that one percent of people who get this virus die.”
He then made the head-scratching argument that many cases go unreported, so we can’t trust the 3.6 percent fatality rate — “but it's the percent of reported cases, and many cases of coronavirus are going unreported.”
That would mean the fatality rate has the potential to increase, not decrease.
Half-way through the video, Mr Reagan complained the left-wing media’s favorite thing to fall back on, is accusing conservatives of being racist, for referring to the coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus.”
Two minutes later, Mr Reagan vented “the media has panicked everybody into getting tested, even if they have no symptoms.”
Reality: The coronavirus can stay inside the infected for up to 5 weeks, with no symptoms. Secondly, test-and-trace is crucial to preventing the spread of the virus, and will allow society to return to normalcy once we isolate the infected.
The coronavirus should be taken seriously, look at what tragically occurred in Hong Kong and Italy. Hong Kong had the outbreak under control, let their guard down by allowing mass-gatherings, and the virus quickly congealed.
A March 17 article by Bloomberg’s Noah Smith warns “if the U.S. doesn’t proceed with extreme measures, it could quickly find itself looking like Italy, where the virus has devastated daily life and is causing hundreds of deaths a day.”
The writing was on the wall, in Italy, for weeks.
From a March 13, 2020 Bloomberg article, written by Vernon Silver, Alessandra Migliaccio, and John Follain:
Conte resisted demands from his government and opposition leaders for strict containment measures. Then he abruptly made his dramatic leap from locking down the north to shutting the entire country. And media leaks of the first decision, to seal off the north, sparked confusion — even panic — prompting thousands to rush onto trains to escape, and leading southern regions to order quarantines for arrivals from the worst-hit areas.
Now is the time for harsh rules, and a two-month shutdown, as the CDC advises, before it is too late.
Correction: A previous iteration of this blog post claimed Charlie Kirk’s March 12 tweet had inaccurate information on the daily death toll worldwide. Matthew Boedy, a Professor of Rhetoric at University of North Georgia, explained in a March 16 Medium post “while Kirk has accurate data, he skips over many other charts on the page — about deaths per country, and flattening the outbreak curve, for example.”