{"id":51073,"date":"2020-02-10T12:12:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T17:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51073"},"modified":"2020-02-10T12:13:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T17:13:03","slug":"controlling-the-narrative-is-not-the-same-as-controlling-the-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51073","title":{"rendered":"Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same as Controlling the Virus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2020\/02\/controlling-narrative-is-not-same-as.html\">Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same as Controlling the Virus<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Are these claims even remotely plausible for a highly contagious virus that spreads easily between humans while carriers show no symptoms?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It&#8217;s clear that the narrative about the coronavirus is being carefully managed globally to minimize the impact on global sentiment and markets.<\/strong>\u00a0Authorities are well aware of the global economy&#8217;s extreme fragility, and so Job One for authorities everywhere is to scrub the news flow of anything that doesn&#8217;t support the implicit official narrative:1. The coronavirus is only an issue in China; it&#8217;s contained outside China.2. The coronavirus will soon be contained in China, and global business will quickly return to normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>In pushing this narrative, authorities around the world share the same goal: limit the damage to consumer confidence and markets<\/strong>, as the legitimacy of every regime from Beijing to Washington D.C. to Nairobi is based on maintaining these economic fictions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1. Global growth will continue in an unbroken trend in the decades ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. This growth benefits everyone, not just elites.As I&#8217;ve noted in previous posts,\u00a0<strong>the critical dynamic here is consumer confidence:<\/strong>\u00a0consumers cannot be allowed to become hesitant or afraid lest they stop borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, buying, buying, buying and speculating, speculating, speculating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Authorities outside China have no more interest in accurate death totals being released than Chinese authorities<\/strong>, and so official agencies and the corporate media dutifully parrot the implausibly low Chinese statistics as if they reflected reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But controlling the narrative is not the same as controlling the virus.<\/strong>\u00a0The narrative is intangible but the virus is real-world. Authorities are betting that controlling the narrative about the virus is equivalent to controlling the actual virus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same as Controlling the Virus Are these claims even remotely plausible for a highly contagious virus that spreads easily between humans while carriers show no symptoms? It&#8217;s clear that the narrative about the coronavirus is being carefully managed globally to minimize the impact on global sentiment and markets.\u00a0Authorities are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,5,6,7],"tags":[130,14545,587,7258,28842],"class_list":["post-51073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-china","tag-narrative-control","tag-of-two-minds","tag-viral-outbreak","tag-wuhan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51074,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073\/revisions\/51074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}