Viral conspiracies on the Right

Given that they have spent the best part of 20 years echo chambering themselves into believing that the most important long term global problem is a conspiracy by scientists and "leftist" media, is it any wonder that the American Right and its Australian counterpart is showing itself as swinging wildly from one bad take to another on Covid-19?   (And yes, I'm sure there will be people on Twitter on the Left with bad takes too, but I don't think they are any numerical match for nutball belief amongst Trumpers.)

Not that there is a consistent line from the Right - it's either all a media beat up of nothing worse than a flu, fuelled by Deep State operatives who only want to see Trump fail, or a devastating Chinese created bio-warfare planning gone wrong (or right) that will devastate the globe.   But there is also always time for "Chinese as filthy disease carrying foreigners who should be let into the country again" opinions too.   Many are excited by the End of Globalisation they think it heralds - ignoring, as they are wont, the obvious benefits that increased trade has brought both to the West and to helping the global poverty rate decrease.

It is incredible, though, how gullible they are in finding no fault in their Dear Leader.   In truth, the US response has been worthy of a (incompetent) tin pot dictatorship, which is what Trump followers want their country to be, anyway.

And isn't the "Dear Leader" praise of Trump that CDC and health officials feel obliged to give really creepy??  These takes are all accurate:

Update:  to watch the Australian wingnut Right take every conspiracy possible, of course you only need to read Sinclair Davidson's Respite Home for the Stupid and Offensive Right.    monty is there trying to be sensible, but why he bothers I don't know.  

Also, Will Hutton makes an interesting historical point on public health and the Left:

The lack of global public health capacity, standards and enforcement are crippling. The US’s problem is not only that it is led by a fool and a knave, but that its hugely expensive private healthcare system does not invest in public health capacity – such as isolation beds for patients stricken with a contagious virus.

Yet America’s problem – just like China’s problem over unregulated markets for wild animal meat – is our problem, too. One of the foundations of the rise of the left in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the growing recognition that no individual, however wealthy, was insulated from disease epidemics. Sanitation, clean water and immunisation were public goods necessary for everyone to stay alive. The left was their champion.

Now, one form of unregulated, free-market globalisation with its propensity for crises and pandemics is certainly dying. But another form that recognises interdependence and the primacy of evidence-based collective action is being born. There will be more pandemics that will force governments to invest in public health institutions and respect the science they represent – with parallel moves on climate change, the oceans, finance and cybersecurity. Because we can’t do without globalisation, the imperative will be to find ways of managing and governing it.