A good friend assures me C19 has been worse in South Dakota than reported. I assured him if things were worse in South Dakota it’d be the only thing reported on.

This folds neatly into the absence of “we told you so” post-Sturgis articles in the boradly-defined media. If Sturgis was every bit the death-petri dish predicted by the broadly-defined media and collaborative politicians, there would be no shortage of articles denouncing the folly of maskless bikers. Alas, the articles are those of the ilk “you might not notice any spike in deaths and infections linked to the Sturgis Run, but believe us, it’s a travesty and did happen as predicted… because we say so.”

—–

Setting aside the mostly peaceful protest mass gatherings last year, and considering a month of scary predictions from the media, the mass gathering Sturgis Run was never an attributed “super spreader.” How is this known? Because there was a single academic study after Sturgis pointing to a “may/might/perhaps/studies indicate” statistical conclusion that Sturgis directly resulted in increased C19 spreading. Statistical conclusion is not the same as solid “look at all the deaths directly connected to people going to Sturgis.” A single academic study tells us it was bad, rather than ample empirical evidence of the Sturgis Superspreader Blight.

You must know that – after all the media doomsaying hype warning of Sturgis Superspreading – if this truly was the case the media news cycle would have lasered in on all the directly attributed infections and deaths tied to Sturgis attendees. The news cycle would be giving a daily Sturgis death count in the same embarrassing way media flaunted soldier death counts from Iraq. We would unavoidably see the superspreader folly of Sturgis. A single post-Sturgis academic study wouldn’t be the only “evidence” of how foolishly wayward Sturgis was.

We would see the horror. We would not be told of the horror in terms of “possibly.” We would see the infections and deaths, and media coverage would still be reporting on it to this day, especially with Texas opening things up.

But this never happened.

I bring this up because the same doomsaying hype is gearing up about Texas forced mandates ending. The media machine is forecasting everything that MIGHT go wrong.

I don’t like media projected fear. So I bring up Sturgis as a calming anecdote, to reveal media hype is not the same as imminent threat. Why? Because our STS peer support groups are already fielding increased anxiety conversations based upon media fearful supposition. Anything that recklessly increases anxiety in my friends angers me.

Be wary of scary media hype carrying headlines with the words MAY, MIGHT, PERHAPS, COULD, etc. This indicates fearmongering based upon nothing.

If mass gatherings and maskless proximity are superspreaders, today’s headlines would read:

TEXAS GUBNER STUPID REMEMBER STURGIS

Don’t allow unfounded media doomsaying to impact your mental health. Their irresponsibility shouldn’t be allowed to make you sick.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-09-08/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-may-have-caused-over-250-000-coronavirus-cases-report