How Western Media Distorts the Real Covid-19 Battle
By: Marjan Krebelj
Tags: Democracy, European Union, Politics, Media Criticism, Covid 19 Crisis

In EU the show is now all about vaccine; how many doses and when. Even our deplorable statistics are now pushed aside as mere numbers which don’t mean anything anymore. In the meanwhile Africa and Oceania are winning this war without vaccines and without us being even aware of it.

These are not just some random outliers. They are almost entire continents with hundreds of millions of people. It is almost half of the planet doing well and not being reported on!

It doesn’t take much more than 5 minutes to pick a few random countries from either side to see how we are doing. But if we go to extreme, and select Slovenia or Sweden, currently the worst of the worst, it is quite remarkable to observe the difference.

Looking at the same situatin more generally, it doesn’t get much better.

Yet western media doesn’t say shit about these countries. Here’s what the standard evening news narrative looks like in EU (namely Slovenia, which I observe in detail).

We’re no better than other EU/Western countries, we’re doing our best, our measures are comparable to other countries…

First of all: this is not true, Slovenia and Sweden are markedly worse (see for yourself). The measures aren’t the same either; while Germany is headed for a complete lockdown, Slovenia is reopening before Christmass (while having significantly worse numbers).

Secondly, it is childish at best. I remember when I was a small kid in primary school, and I got a bad grade, I would go on explaining that almost everyone else got bad grades too, especially if some good kids flunked just the same. “Then why didn’t you excel?” my father would say. And he was right. Others doing badly is no excuse for me to go along with that. Our governments nor our media don’t seem to understand that.

More often than not this narrative is reported in a spirit of unity and comradeship, like we’re in this together. So what? Does this make the deaths any less tragic? Are the nurses less exhausted because there are so many of them all across the continent? Is the fuckup any less severe?

A [insert random country] is having a surge

… as in: look at them failing, poor losers. We’re so much better than them. Like we really are, aren’t we? It is just disgusting to even bring this kind of comparison up when it comes to needless deaths and ruined lives. Like 10 is less tragic than 40? Or 400? To the person who died it is no less of a death if he or she died alone or with many others. Beyond the event horizon these numbers are meaningless.

And finally the worst of all:

China is reopening after pandemic [picture: people of Wuhan are having a party]

… and immediately after: This is because China is a totalitarian communist country which uses mass control over population to defeat the pandemic. People have no human rights, yada yada yada…

This is wrong on so many levels.

China is indeed a totalitarian communism of some sort, but that is not why it has beaten the pandemic. Pandemic is beaten with fast action and responsible behaviour, and political system is just one of the many ways in which that can be implemented. Linking those two into an exclusive causal relationship is a corrupt way of reporting.

The real purpose of these news is to blow into the trumpet of our own propaganda as if to say; yes, they won against the virus, but we are paying a heroic price four our precious democracy and freedom rights here. We, again, are so much better than them. Yes people are dying (needlessly), but they are our heroes who put their lives on the line for the values we stand for. We all know this is bullshit.

Just a side note: Russian vaccination program is often reported in a similar manner; just look at Putin, what a bad guy he is, how dare he develop his own vaccine without asking us first!

Back to the point: they report on China as if it was the only country which beat the virus down. Obviously for the reasons mentioned above.

New Zealand is shown rarely (well, they’re in the middle of the summer now so it is expected to have low numbers), while African or Oceanic countries don’t seem to appear on our maps anymore. It is almost as if they ceased to exist once cheap travel to exotic destinations became practically impossible. No news on Vietnam, Burma, Mali, Indonesia, nothing, nada, nada, nada… Africa is mentioned only when some local surges appear (or collide with many of the pre-existing problems), but in a general way of handling Covid-19 nope, never. Not once did I remember watching news in Slovenia of African countries being mentioned as an exemplar of good strategy (which they are).

The real reason is that African or Oceanic countries don’t fit the general Western narrative of false heroism and pseudo-democracy. Since these are almost impossible to defend reasonably it is better not to mention them at all. We don’t expect to put ourselves in shame, do we?

That way EU and North America are an echo-chamber of their own failure theatrically dressed up as inevitability.

If anything the African and Oceanic societies show that when the good will, intelligence and empathy take the steering wheel towards responsible behaviour this seeming inevitability can be overcome. To the spoiled asses of the West this truth is rather uncomfortable because it would mean that we need to give up on some of our daily luxuries to help, well, eachother. We’re way to spoiled or selfish to do that so we much rather distort our own media machine to feed us reassuring images of the world.