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Fox News host Greg Gutfeld penned a spot-on editorial about who missed the boat on the coronavirus outbreak — just about everyone, “especially the experts.”
He noted how those with good intentions, who were telling people to go about their daily lives and not to panic, were off the mark.
“They were wrong, but, with good intentions. They thought it was for our own good, to lie to us,” Gutfeld wrote.
Stressing that doctors knew COVID-19 was bad news, he pointed out they are trained in giving bad news, “so the bad doesn’t create more bad — being in panic mode makes you less likely to focus on important information.”
“To use a clumsy analogy, America is the patient, and the experts had to give bad news to America, without freaking it out,” Gutfeld said.
“The diagnosis: You’re gonna get sick. And part of you isn’t gonna make it. Hopefully, you will lose no more than a toe. But it could be more,” he wrote, as if speaking for the doctors.
The Fox News host accurately points out that the coronavirus is a “highly contagious, deadly disease with no therapeutics in sight. No vaccine. no drugs – and what’s just as bad: no real information to soothe our itching curiosity.”
As if necessary, he reminds readers that China wasn’t forthcoming.
“To use another clumsy analogy … China and its Wuhan virus are like the guy at a bar who keeps saying that pulsing thing on his lip isn’t a sore,” Gutfeld said.
The experts had bad news for “Patient America,” and had to deliver the news without inducing panic.
Gutfeld then explained why, in the early stages, the medical experts did not level with us.
“In the back of their minds, they saw us as dumb animals – incapable of facing a pandemic head-on,” he said. “To buy everyone time – so hopefully, we might become psychologically ready – they said a few things that were false.”
Those things included live your life as normal, because the disease isn’t here, Gutfeld said, there’s no need for you to wear a mask and the flu kills more, yearly.
“These were not mean-spirited lies, or even cover-your-ass lies – they were simply well-meaning responses that the future proved misguided,” he pointed out.
With a little hindsight, he stressed that “maybe we could have benefited from a little panic. Not a lot, but a little.”
New York placing the sick and contagious among the vulnerable in rest homes was cited as the first lesson.
As for the claim that there was no proof masks help you reduce transmission, Gutfeld asked the obvious question: “Why the hell do people wear them in hospitals?”
Noting that wearing masks early may have cut viral transmission, he said medical professionals don’t wear masks because it’s Halloween, but because “barriers work.”
“Problem was, no one could get masks in mass quantities. We don’t need millions, we really need billions,” he said. “We didn’t have that. The experts didn’t want to tap that resource out. So they told us we didn’t need them.”
Makes an awful lot of sense, no?
He said if the experts had leveled with us and told us in January there aren’t enough masks and that health workers need them most, and urged folks to make their own, “perhaps May would look a whole lot better.”
As for the critics — who always seem to be employed — attacking those who want to get back to work and, more importantly, start earning a paycheck, Gutfeld shared a thought or two.
“These amateurs belong to what’s known as ‘the kiddie table,’ he wrote. “If a person cannot comprehend that every decision carries a risk, not simply a benefit – then they must not be allowed at the adult’s table.”
“They must be quarantined, because not only are they hindering the adults who must make such brave but routine decisions, they are cowardly too,” he added. “They don’t want any skin in the game, but they want to punish you for having the guts to do what they can’t: which is, to share the risk.”
Gutfeld cited CNN host S.E. Cupp as one of these “amateurs,” after her criticism of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s sober reflection that people dying will be a part of returning to work.
“None of her shrill, mindless peers could say when a civilization must return to life, but they could certainly condemn you as evil, for taking the adult stand and offering a suggestion based on the facts of future suffering,” he said.
He tells us that in addition to his first rule, which is that if you’ve offered no advice on how to deal with an oncoming problem, you lose your spot at the table, his second rule is that you can’t leave the kid’s table, “until you tell us what you’re willing to risk.”
The other lie, a comparison to the flu, was described as a “rhetorical response… meant to contextualize our priorities.”
Using car accidents as a comparison, Gutfeld said we learned to manage risk, adding seat belts requirements over time.
“Airbags are still only a few decades old,” he stressed. “The coronavirus is the result of biology unleashing something novel into our world of enhanced transport. So now that it’s here, and there is no cure – we must manage risks.”
Ultimately, Gutfeld reassures readers that once the “change” dictated by the Chinese coronavirus becomes routine, people will return to their normal behaviors.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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