England’s potential COVID-19 certificate scheme would require customers to show proof of vaccination, a negative COVID-19 test or immunity status to gain entry into shops, pubs and theaters.
April 12, 2021 · 4:00 PM EDT By Orla Barry
Covid19
The plan is to have no plan
By Arthur L. Carter
“There is no genius there, only a damaged human being playing havoc with our lives.”
In this space I am parking my short description of the de facto plan the Trump government has for getting the United States out of the public health emergency caused by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is my read on what the government’s guidance and actions amount to. I will revise the text and add new links as more information flows in. My purpose in posting it is to challenge the American press to be a lot clearer in its descriptions.
The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible— by telling the governors they’re in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by “flooding the zone with shit,” Steve Bannon’s phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call “search costs” for reliable intelligence.
Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default. To succeed this will require one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history, the execution of which will, I think, consume the president’s re-election campaign. So much has already been made public that the standard script for a White House cover up (worse than the crime…) won’t apply. Instead, everything will ride on the manufacture of confusion. The press won’t be able to “expose” the plot because it will all happen in stark daylight. The facts will be known, and simultaneously they will be inconceivable.
“The plan is to have no plan” is not a strategy, really. Nor would I call it a policy. It has a kind of logic to it, but this is different from saying it has a design— or a designer. Meaning: I do not want to be too conspiratorial about this. To wing it without a plan is merely the best this government can do, given who heads the table. The manufacture of confusion is just the ruins of Trump’s personality meeting the powers of the presidency. There is no genius there, only a damaged human being playing havoc with our lives.
Source: The plan is to have no plan – PressThink
PRESSTHINK, a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, is written by Jay Rosen.
Stay home, damnit! Watch these pandemic thrillers and take notes!
PANDEMIC THRILLERS
Perhaps you want to fight viruses with viruses. Here are some recommendations for movies in which the disease is the star.
Contagion (2011) is Steven Soderbergh’s cautionary thriller, with Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, Elliott Gould and others working together to fight a spreading pandemic. Call it Illness Eleven. (Netflix, Amazon, iTunes)
Pontypool (2008) is a very Canadian horror flick from Bruce McDonald, in which the virus might require everyone to learn French. Equal parts funny and disturbing, or amusant et inquiétant. (Amazon, iTunes)
12 Monkeys (1995), Terry Gilliam’s dark sci-fi thriller, features Bruce Willis as a man sent back in time to stop a virus before it spirals out of control. (Amazon, iTunes)
I Am Legend (2007) is one of several adaptations of Richard Matheson’s end-of-the-world novel (others are 1971’s Omega Man and 1964’s The Last Man on Earth) but worth watching for the blissful first half, in which Will Smith hunts deer and otherwise camps out in a depopulated New York City. It gets messy when the inevitable zombies show up, however. (Amazon, iTunes)
Shaun of the Dead (2004), because the end of the world doesn’t have to be gloomy. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost keep calm, carry on and battle zombies. (Netflix, Amazon, iTunes)
Source: Chris Knight, The National Post
Trump’s Blame on Obama for Coronavirus Tests – just another Trump Lie
Amid criticism over his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that he had to overcome an Obama-era Food and Drug Administration “rule” to more quickly provide diagnostic tests to the American people. Experts, however, told us no such formal regulation was ever implemented under the previous administration.
Amid criticism over his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that he had to overcome an Obama-era Food and Drug Administration “rule” to more quickly provide diagnostic tests to the American people. Experts, however, told us no such formal regulation was ever implemented under the previous administration.
The outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, has now spread to more than 70 countries, including the U.S. According to a Johns Hopkins University case tracker and a New York Times database, as of March 6, more than 200 people in the U.S. have been infected with the new disease, known as COVID-19, and at least 14 have died.