{Originally posted to the author’s website}
The hyper-partisan world we live in is pushing a terrible narrative of some people against others in the actual battle between a micro-sized virus combating all of humanity.
Progressives’ Claim of Poor Vs. Rich
Far left media like The New York Times have been writing over the past years about income inequality and wealth inequality and are viewing the coronavirus through the same lens.
The papers write that the poor are “bearing the brunt” of the pandemic and are being “left behind.” Those word choices are simply untrue. Everyone is being assaulted by the pandemic. Rich people are not sitting in the back while poor people are on the front lines fighting the disease to help their wealthy patrons. There are highly educated doctors on the front lines battling for everyone’s benefit, not waiters. The rich aren’t “leaving anyone behind” as everyone who comes into contact with an infected person is being tested.
While lower income professions like fast food establishments do have people working in close proximity and therefore more susceptible to catching the virus, it was a wealthy lawyer from the New York City suburbs who first became sick and spread it to his neighbors. People with lower income have lost their salaries as retail stores and restaurants have closed, but the small business owners who run those locations are actually losing money during the pandemic, not just not making money.
The poor are definitely more vulnerable in not having savings to manage when they are suddenly without wages, but the Times wrote about the pandemic as class warfare. It seemingly believes that elite society has opted to throw low wage workers out of their jobs to keep the wealthy from getting sick.
Trump’s Chinese Virus Vs. Coronavirus
Trump has run on a mantra of “putting America first.” Labeling one’s adversaries with negative names and stereotypes often makes one feel superior and this global adversary affords Trump the ability to play to his theme.
Trump called the virus the “Chinese Virus” because it started in China, rather than Covid-19, the coronavirus of 2019. Doing so provided the president an opportunity to advance an isolationist stance in shutting the borders and keeping people at home against a foreign invader.
Trump is not alone in taking such precautionary steps, but the renaming of the virus was a way of furthering a particular narrative. The shame is that the virus attacks all people and a cure will help all humanity.
Anti-Zionists Conjure U.S.- Israel Coronavirus Conspiracy
During the early months of the coronavirus outbreak in December 2019 and January 2020, the hardest hit countries were China and Iran leading many Arab news outlets to charge that the United States and Israel were waging biological warfare. Some far-left celebrities even accused Israel and Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law from developing the virus so that they could get rich from selling the vaccine.
Lost in the discussion is that it SARS-CoV-2, is the latest in a strain Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which have gone on for years, this one being the 2019 variant which is more contagious. Many pharmaceutical companies around the world have been working on developing vaccines for all strains of SARS for many years.
A virus does not know rich-or-poor, American or Chinese, Israeli or Arab. It attacks all human beings with the same vigor. It is tragic that a pandemic not only doesn’t serve as a means to pull humanity together, but is used as a vehicle to score political points and further distance people from one another in a time of forced social distancing.
It is a sad commentary on the fabric of decency today.
Related First One Through articles:
Rumor Contagion on Coronavirus in Congress
The Media Cares Much More About Journalists Than Children