The Covid crisis has thrown up many conundrums, and ideological positions.  The politicisation of death is distressing, so called "Covid death porn".  But there are other dimensions to this, not least the other, less reported Covid porn epidemic.  Returning to real science is critical, as is moral and political perspective.

I learned a new phrase this morning.  Covid death porn.  I realised right away what it meant.  And you might also.

It refers, of course, to the simply awful practice of certain participants in the Covid wars to obsess over death numbers and, now that the “crisis” of deaths has largely passed, the seeming “spike” in cases.  Most of which do not lead to death, and which among the many, mostly young, recent “victims” cause not even a health hiccup.  And which may or may not signify a “second wave”, or perhaps simply indicate a spike in testing for the virus.

Here is Guy de Bedoyere:

Sky News this morning featured another of those bizarro-world reports the broadcast media seems to be fixated about pushing out. This one, by Alex Crawford in Houston, was about the dramatic increase in infections in Texas. It was straight back to the Good Old Days of Covid Death Porn – except that there didn’t seem to be much death. 

… The entire premise of the piece seemed to be that catching COVID-19 is invariably a catastrophe and that death follows as night follows day. That this was not corroborated by any of the content of the piece did not bother the fearless reporter or the people she spoke to. Nor did it match the news that the surge in infections in Texas seems to be partly due to much younger people getting COVID-19 who, as we all know, are far less likely either to get sick or to die.

Presumably even now the BBC’s battle-seasoned Covid hacks are on their way to Texas for a slice of the action.

The bad old days of Covid death porn, indeed.

The current brouhaha in Victoria that is causing such a media flutter in Australia, and, disappointingly, a rise in ill-informed and opportunistic party political points scoring against Daniel Andrews for all the wrong reasons, is merely the most recent canvas upon which the Covid death porn game is being played.

As I have previously argued, this new game reflects very, very poorly on those people who would politicise death, for ideological purposes and to score debating points. 

https://thefreedomsproject.com/item/526-covid-wars-and-the-politicisation-of-death

Death is often convenient for politicians.  Look at the “leaders” who jump into the action and the spotlight whenever there is a tragedy, whether natural or man-made.  See under the headscarf wearing Jacinda Adern post the Christchurch massacre.  Or ScoMo’s (utterly gauche, misplaced and counterproductive) efforts in Cobargo during the bushfires.

But Covid has created its own ideological tribes, and they mean business.  They are engaged, and fighting.  For what, precisely?

The media may be able to be forgiven for indulging in Covid death porn, since, as we know, “if it bleeds, it leads”.  Death sells.  Tragedy, drama and disaster means more viewers, and more viewers mean more advertisers.  Everyone’s a winner, baby, and that’s no lie.  No, the far greater sinners here are those who, without any apparent obvious ideological stake in all this, have determined that “we must all follow the state” and believe the propaganda, come what may. 

They have emerged from all sides of what is now rapidly becoming an obsolete “left -right” divide.  Leftists love control, a big State and authoritarian government.  We know this. 

But there are also those who might have been regarded as small government, freedom loving types, who have come out, earnestly and vigorously charging at opponents and Covid sceptics, all in the cause of lockdown. 

It may be a commitment to “safetyism”. 

It may be innocent caution, like that involved in invoking the “precautionary principle” that is so often used, irrelevantly, to urge us to undertake “climate action” and aligned environmental protection. 

It may be scientism, a belief in the truth “science” at all costs, and without the remotest understanding of what science is.  A scourge of our age. 

It may be innate faith in the managerial elite of “experts” who have assumed the high ground in our world.  All this is in the face of credible, dissenting scientists emerging and the mounting scientific evidence that lockdowns (for example), at best, don’t make a difference, and, at worst, actually may exacerbate the death tolls.

The Covid death pornsters have undertaken Covid sceptic shaming, accusing those of us who see a massive lack of proportionality and rationality in the government panics we have witnessed across the world.  Alas, they also play the deaths card, endlessly.  They make totally irrelevant comparisons between different countries, typically engaging in Covid death porn in order to do so.  Sweden’s atypical approach the Covid is a natural focus for their morbid attention, and about the Swedish approach, much has been written. 

https://lockdownsceptics.org/has-the-swedish-government-got-it-right/

Almost cheering on massive Swedish deaths is not a good look.  To those who so engage, all Swedish Covid deaths matter.  Massively.  Sweden has, indeed, become the focus of obsessive attention from the Covid death wishers, despite the fact that comparing and contrasting nation-to nation death figures is nothing short of a mug’s game, for all the reasons painfully recognised by those of us with a modicum of awareness of complexity theory, assigning causation to correlative statistcs and the general limitations of science.

Googling “Covid death porn”, as I did upon first hearing the term, is an unnerving experience, though. 

Expecting an explanation of that which I have just described, I was confronted with something quite different.  The porn epidemic – no, let us call it a pandemic – that has already engulfed the world since the age of the internet dawned has “spiked” during the lockdown of these past months.  It is one of the few true “spikes” we have witnessed.  Who’da thought?  A mostly singleton age, where singles living alone constitute an ever-growing demographic and in some countries, like Japan, an near-majority component of the population (certainly of the young population), is not unlikely to turn to the computer for sexual fulfilment in a time of enforced loneliness.

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/coronavirus-pornography-and-the-pandemic-of-violence-against-wo/12131020

As one headline noted:

Coronavirus is going viral on Pornhub.

Whether the use of pornography and violence towards women (in particular) are causally connected is another matter, of considerable complexity, but potentially of the utmost seriousness.

The New Zealand Herald has noted the spike in Covid related porn use.  There is a surge in people seeking help for addiction to porn.

In the first few days of lockdown, website Pornhub had more than a 20 per cent jump in traffic. Though porn use dropped slightly, a steady 10 per cent increase, compared to pre-lockdown figures, has continued.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12328720

In bygone days, this might have been recognised for what it is – a spiritual crisis of disastrous proportions.  But this has been allowed to pass through to the wicketkeeper, like so much that has resulted from the quasi-fascist Covid lockdown.  It has simply not registered on the radar.  While we continue to obsess about deaths that, by and large, simply don’t now occur, despite spikes in largely harmless infections.  So, the media has failed again to report a big story, pretty much as we would expect.  Why worry about people’s mental, social and spiritual welfare when there are death counts to report?  It is, pardon the phrase, a f…..g disgrace.  The fourth estate has failed, abysmally.

Where does the Church figure in all this?

Perhaps those very wise, if rare, pastors who have upped the offering of Confession since the lockdown was partially lifted are onto something.  They have realised something that has, alas, not made the pages of the lamestream media.  Lonely men – and women too, if you look at the figures on internet porn, where something like 60 per cent of the population now routinely get their bedroom thrills alone and online – have reacted to lockdown in a way that is entirely predictable, and morally disastrous.

https://www.hprweb.com/2020/06/the-pornography-epidemic/

Those supine, miserably craven bishops – let us call them middle managers of moderate ability now “managing” complex modern, often secular tasks – who seem to have taken more interest in being government Covid agents and acolytes rather than being true shepherds, have probably not twigged to what is occurring.  There is a sublime irony here.  Just as Christians have been forcibly cut off from the fellowship of other Christians united in collective worship, and, for Catholics, the incomparable consolation of the Sacraments, those charged with our spiritual care have simply shut down their faculties.  Faculties in both senses.  I refer to their minds, but also to their God-ordained task, in Persona Christi, of shepherding souls to heaven.  Once that meant resisting the State, with all of its utopian endeavours and coercive power.

I am not alone in wondering if Christians all over the world, especially those struggling with their faith, will ever return to the Church after the global lockdown eventually eases.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/suicide-by-secularisation-how-the-churches-are-dying

Which brings us back to Covid, it causes, its spread and its impact.  The common understanding of the “crisis”, which has led to the horrendous harms outlined above, rests on “the science” of Covid.  A little (or a lot) like climate alarmism, the understanding among the public of the science of the virus is massively circumscribed, to put it at its most polite.  Many medical practitioners and medical (and other) scientists across the globe have recognised that the assumed science of Covid is far from settled.  It might even be termed “bollocks”.  Their voices have been suppressed, sidelined, parked, in the cause of managerial government.

Coincidentally, due to the good offices of that great Australian online warrior Dallas Beaufort, whose tireless work in bringing common sense and a questioning attitude to his fortunate social media friends via an incomparable information service, my attention was drawn to a recent (May 2020) podcast on the likely causes and progress of the great virus. 

It featured an Australian scientist, an alternate voice of considerable scientific pedigree, Ted Steele, who argued three things.  One is that the key to understanding the nature of the Covid epidemic is to focus on the strength and virility of the virus in particular locations, in other words it geographic dimensions.  As a professional geographer, I thought this sound, interesting and appropriate. 

Second, he argued that the response of governments had reflected lack of information, lack of perception, and politically inspired moral panic. 

Third, based on his own research and that of his colleagues, he identified a correlation between the epicentres of the virus – all located along the 40 degree north parallel of latitude, and with Wuhan being ground zero.  His hypothesis is that the whole thing is the result of a meteor exploding on 11 October 2019, over – yes, Wuhan!

I had certainly noted the massive difference between cases and morbidity in the northern hemisphere to that experienced south of the equator.  I had attributed this to seasonal issues.  The Northern hemisphere massive exposure was due to their being in late winter, notoriously the season of the flu.  I thought.  But here is a new theory.  I do not yet buy it.  I have no idea whether meteor dust contains viruses.  Nor, probably, do you.  We should always be sceptical of any scientific hypothesis, as our default position.  But Steele at least is doing real science, unlike many of his colleagues.  He is investigating, and testing hypotheses.  Not simply doing power, influence and media stardom, like other scientists whose ideas and presence with which we have, alas, become only too familiar.  Not doing policy-on-the-run in the service of scientific stardom.  Professor Pantsdown stands out, as well as Fauci.  Both are past, abysmal failures in their assessments of pandemics.  Yet they rule the roost in the scientific-media-government establishment.

In a sense, the origins of the virus are beside the point.  The point is to understand how it transmits, and what this tells us about appropriate and proportional policy responses.  But Steele argues that the causes of the virus DO tell us what will work, and what will not, in trying to stop the spread.

All fascinating stuff.  Steele’s work has been passed on the Australian Government, and it was received without enthusiasm.  Governments have been much more concerned with political management, as we know.  With decidedly mixed success, as it happens.  Look at Victoria, a Covid basket case of political mismanagement, indeed, cluelessness.

But placing Steele’s theories in context is useful.  It reminds us that there are many scientific voices in this debate.  It reminds us of the role, and the limits of science.  It reminds us that science is about the formulation and empirical testing of hypotheses.  It reminds us that science is inherently conflictual, contested, controversial and fallible.  And it reminds us that the wisdom of government decision making resides beyond the walls of the academy.

Understanding this only reinforces the utter disappointment of the rational among us who see this episode as having shown up our governance structures in an exceptionally poor light.  These structures, and the AWOL fourth estate which has been on strike, merely performing the function of an arm of government of little use other than to spit out government propaganda and limp advertorials for “taking care”, all of us “being in it together”, and so on.

Sadly, the supine class also includes the Church, as noted above. 

Missing the big spiritual picture, with the lockdown having led directly to mental health deterioration, the crushing of social bonds, an increase in the loneliness of isolation, fractured family bonds, the grieving of those whose loved ones passed away – not from Covid – without the consolation of saying goodbye, Church leaders have instead reverted to what they now, alas, do best.  Public relations.  At the cost of abandoning their suffering flocks, exposed to the temptations of satan, now turbo-charged in the era of online sin and enforced isolation.  That they do not get this, and that would rather cow-tow to governments in the service of fear-mongering, is one of the great disappointments of my life.  We thought they meant what they have been telling us all our lives.

A particularly egregious example of spiritual failure and scientific stupidity is the case of a Catholic bishop who shall remain nameless.  His latest pitch is to pray for the poor people of Melbourne, or Meldanistan as I prefer to call it, during their time of crisis.  Oh dear.  The only crisis to which the people of Melbourne are exposed is the policy lunacy, wilful ignorance and sheer demonic evil of the ghastly man who, alas, has happened to be in charge when the virus hit the place.

If the government and other goons who have been indulging in a mega version of Covid death porn would only pause, take deep breaths, look at the evidence of real scientists who recognise hysteria and ill-gotten panic when they see it, then we might all be able to get on with our lives in relative peace and appropriate caution in relation to health risks.  And get our wounded souls in some sort of order, in these spiritually crippling times.

It is a grievously sad story.