Your instruction channel is Wikipedia
Take note of how Wikipedia is used by reputation-management firms and propagandists to colour your view on a current event.
The joke going around is that Europe has Putin’s war in Ukraine to thank for ending the COVID pandemic. Once the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces commenced, governments in Europe and the Anglosphere reduced or dropped their pandemic briefings. Just as all it took was the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the USA to remove the COVID-death-count insets from the corners of cable news channels, so all it took was a new approved enemy of humanity to be nominated for COVID to quietly slip out of the newspapers.
Worldwide, governments dropped or scaled back regulations that had become cumbersome impediments to economies struggling with recession, inflation and dearth of tourism. Yet, even by the end of February, the COVID war was pretty much over, at least in the UK. The wretched contradictions, obfuscations and fearmongering had become a tattered curtain of falsehoods that anyone curious could have seen through.
Fatigue regarding the pandemic comes from many sources.
The main one is boredom. People were initially alarmed about a global pandemic which could (according to official reports) strike down the young and healthy as well as the frail and elderly. When their experience of the illness (either personally or second-hand through acquaintances) proved less deadly than anticipated, fear lessened. It is hard to maintain a fever-pitch of anxiety in the face of unexceptional rates of mortality. It is tiresome to wear masks, especially when you see others failing to do so. It is impractical to self-isolate and embarrassing to do so when your only symptoms are those of a common cold. It is frustrating not to see relatives or attend social events. It is vexing to enforce regulations that limit the viability (let alone profitability) of your small business.
The announcement of a new strain of COVID-19 (the Delta+ variant) was met by indifference, or perhaps not even that. It was not met (or received) by any response at all. Even those formerly concerned and fully jabbed could not stir themselves. The Omicron variant that was warned of in December was the final effective move of the state-pharma complex to scare populations into compliance. There will be no others.
Apart from the Chinese, very few people wear masks in the street here. Buses have stopped enforcing face-mask wearing, trains likewise. By the time the heat of the summer reaches its zenith, we can expect mask-wearing outside to cease completely for non-frail British people. It will not return. That is not because the British people have shaken off the yoke of the media fear campaign and government lies. It is not because they have become more critical or analytical nor because they are braver or more independent. They have not learned any lesson or re-examined their trust in authority. No, they are simply bored.
Moreover, the medical establishment knows public compliance and patience is at a low and has hence tailored its warnings to adapt to the apathetic reception it predicts. This is not because it has faced up to its hubris or has rejected scaremongering. It is a pragmatic attempt to maintain its credibility and authority. If government advisers announced a dangerous new strain, pulling out all the stops with publicity and instructions, the majority of people would reject such warnings. Not because of any concerted resistance or because the human tendency to socially conform has changed. Sad as it is, the return of some degree of freedom is due to a mixture of boredom and the social pressure to resist extended restrictions.
By what measure will we know that the elites finally have given up using COVID fear to legitimise tightening grip on power? My measure would be when Wikipedia’s “Ongoing” section on the front page no longer features “COVID-19 pandemic”. Wikipedia, like social- and mass-media, is a channel to send the governing elite’s approved line to the non-governing elites and the general populace.
I am sure I am not the only one to notice how every day a new Ukrainian you have never heard of gets a page when they are killed in the current conflict in Ukraine. These pages are posted by activists and agents in a propaganda effort, mainly to reinforce the impression of a bloody onslaught upon Ukrainian military and civilians. These individual pages are not fake or irrelevant. They are being posted for political reasons and you should be aware that you are the target audience.
Farfetched? A paranoid conspiracy theory about a crowd-sourced online encyclopaedia? Well, what about this curious titbit in the “Did you know…” section (24th March 2022)?
Our apologies if this image is not clear. What is needed to be read is described in the main article.
The second item happens to be “…that Oleksandr Oksanchenko won the As the Crow Flies Award at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2017?” Not exactly gripping or surprising as a random fact. It seems mainly intended to lead you to follow the link to the page about the Ukrainian pilot, who was killed in combat on 25 February. That page was created on 3 March in Ukrainian. The English page was made on 8 March. Oksanchenko’s flying award was not notable enough for even a mention in Ukrainian until his death, but now it is a piece of trivia worthy of the front page? Oksanchenko gets a page in Ukrainian, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Chinese.
I do not say that Oksanchenko was not a brave man and an accomplished pilot, nor do I say that he is not notable enough for a Wikipedia page; I do say, take note of how Wikipedia (treated by individuals, companies and the media as a first-resort resource) is used by reputation-management firms and propagandists to colour your view on a current event. Remember, this post-COVID period is a truce and the state will resume its action of control, restriction and demoralisation. Next time, that will be through exploiting emergent situation or fabricating an emergency. What exactly? Wait and watch Wikipedia.
