Rivaling the prevaricating undertones of a swanky Capitol Hall ball and gala of an evening full of dancing, libations, and subterfuge populated by leading political actors, where the early morning hours demand a line of demarcation separating a muted frenzy from fatigued apathy, the digital ledgers of Covid-19 trackers thrived in 2022 and the peak of the apparent massive wave of infections producing the necessary characteristics of a pandemic. While bureaucrats dusted off the manual of the Spanish Flu crises of 1918, the Coronavirus allegedly lost favor with the social media trending news algorithms and slowly descend towards an eternal finality, the bot mechanisms twitching in a ceremony of pre-rigor mortis and corresponding to the trickling flow of information with only the government of New Zealand grasping desperately to designs of controlling the population through panic, while altering reality.
Two years ago, the computer Covid trackers reached a peak number of unique visitors, a metric measuring popularity, however absent from engagement, which indicates that the typical end-user was making a judgement on a glance, rather than the minimum amount of time to make an informed decision. In this universe dictated by the 15-second attention span defining the contemporary, the number of reported deaths by the pathogen listed on the platforms also crested with the influx of web traffic, as paranoia swept through the masses like a storm of new and polarizing gender pronouns allowing a senior citizen to identify as a sexually viable drag queen in their twenties. With hysteria abound, the Grim Reaper branding of “reported” deaths attributed to the virus was tainted by falsehoods and massive inconsistencies in erroneous data reporting. A death by suicide of an individual who had previously tested positive for the virus was categorized as a fatality of Covid-19, or a terminal cancer patient who at one point had contracted the pathogen was also marked as a Coronavirus victim. Armed with inflated numbers, and “real-time” live graphically aesthetic websites pulsating in shimmering effulgence, it was “game on!” for big pharm and overzealous politicians pushing the proverbial envelope of first level tyranny. The Chinese model of governance deployed on a worldwide scale was being shrouded under the false pretenses of a deadly illusion that included all the contrite cuteness of a person choosing to identify as the “dear leader”.
The utter failure on a global scale of the various nation states’ health agencies to properly communicate and adopt a universal tracking system implies not only incompetency, but a major detachment from any ethical and moral responsibility to properly advise the populace of potential detriment and dangers. On a state and local level, at least in the US, pandemic fear-mongering politicians quantified public health recommendations as “mandates and measures” effectively destroying the fabric of small businesses and the confidence of the public to interact outside of the confines of the home. Of course, the skyrocketing numbers on the pixilated digital domains only enhanced the fear and reticence of individuals to leave their residence and face the possibility of a zombiepocalypse.
As history tends to “repeat itself”, the shame endured by younger and middle-aged Americans experiencing a similar plight to the trials and tribulations of the Greatest generation in the aftermath of a global health “crises”, societal engineering has reached a critical mass of a daredevil freefall of malevolent discourse and propaganda. However, members of the population under 50 years of age conceivably do not have a unifying event such as the historic Lunar landing to bank on and the near future is morosely bleak as the introverted become increasingly paranoid and detached, and the extroverted compelled to navigate the empty streets in search for interaction that does not involve software apparitions, but good old fashioned human interaction.
With the damage lingering from people fearing the live tracking numbers of incredulously reported Covid deaths, the trajectory of society has been altered to an unrecognizable expanse of subversion and isolation that may not be salvageable until common sense is restored ten decades from today as the Information Age lingers.