"Scary Clown" Sightings and Coronavirus

A few years ago--I think during the 2016 election season--there were several scary clown sightings all over the United States. It's possible many of those were spontaneous, but maybe some of them were staged by professionals and were meant to test how fearmongering rumors spread on the Internet and social media so models for propaganda could be generated.

It's possible the hysteria around this disease is similarly engineered. I spent some time yesterday reading an italian medical journal paper on the outcomes of the disease and demographics, and it seemed like the worst outcomes were associated with old age, and prior cardiovascular medical conditions. However, that paper could be propaganda too.

I think the virus is "real", but the hysteria associated with it is engineered, and quite a lot of that hysteria is coming from alt-media sources who are trying to cash in on click bait. There's still not a lot of first hand info available through reliable channels, but there might be in the days ahead.

One positive thing that's happening is businesses are coming up with modulated policies, like "senior shopping hours", so people who believe they're at risk for the disease can be isolated from the general public. Those measures seem sensible. If this is a new strain of the flu, eventually everyone will get it--maybe over the course of a few years--like any other strain of the flu. It probably makes sense to have "senior hours" during the flu season.

If that approach works or becomes more widespread, it could be possible to avert a total economic collapse and melt down. I'd abandon the "they're going to implode the economy" theory.