GenZedong

I wrote all this but I re-read your comment before posting and I think I misunderstood who you meant by "they really do not care about pestilence" I believe you are referring to government officials who are in the pockets of the corporations, in which case I agree with you. I think the average american (not the alt-right) would be apalled if presented with an unbiased perspective on covid and now monkeypox are ravaging this country and in fact hurting our long term economic prosperity. The decision to not take covid seriously will be remembered as (1) a crime against humanity , and (2) the absolute final nail in the coffin for the American empire and teh Western imperialism it maintains.

That's not what she's saying - she is very aware of the corporate and government interests which are choosing to downplay covid. She's not saying it is a chud subset she's saying that the war on masks is the ruling class/media elite against the general population. They have a rather small minority who agree with them and they parade them as if they represent "the silent majority" when it is almost exactly the opposite, on covid, abortion, etc. The american right has been working on driving a wedge between the population and the government since Ronald Reagan (big gov bad) and they could not let covid give the gov a win of actually being seen as saving the day in the eyes of the people and restoring faith that the gov can actually be trusted.

"as soon as people started accepting COVID as normal" - as much as I don't care for Chomsky the phrase manufactured consent is applicable here. Why did they accept covid as normal? because the stock market dropped 30% in a matter of weeks - and the consumption driven economy was literally imploding (oil consumption - the lifeblood of the american empire- dropped PRECIPITOUSLY) so the propaganda machine went into overdrive. CNN (centrist media), Fox (Right media) and alt media (far right media perceived as non-corporate - which it isn't) literally conspired to make americans resist mask mandates, instill a generally negative perception of taking covid seriously, and a fatalistic approach in those who were trying to err on the side of caution. All the while these same executives are retreating to private islands to their penthouses and private jets (seriously).

The average american was complying with masks just fine and staying home just fine, seriously it was fine and most people who aren't fucking alt-right white boys were doing just fine... otherwise the spending wouldn't have dropped so much, but the alt media which is actually just an extension of the corporate media system fanned the resistors to mask mandates who were never properly chastised by authorities. Social media companies (part of the corporate-intelligence sphere) 100% boosted anti-masking messages and promoted content designed to make the tiny minority resisting masks seem like the majority - this has been one of the great propaganda success stories of the internet. They used this astroturfed anti-vax movement as a pretext for "we need to open back up" and the lackeys in elected positions did not contest this.

So if you apply the notion of the tripartite empire (public, security, and corporate), the decision to not take covid precautions was the successful leveraging of the media apparatus owned by the corporate/private arm of the empire against the security arm of the empire (government employees, elected officials trying to do the right thing - as rare as that is- etc).

Essentially the modern capitalist economy is built on perpetual consumption of frivolous good and services in the West (not necessities) and so taking covid seriously would literally have meant collapse.

Edit: the reason I feel so comfortable asserting that this was all hands on deck (including CNN) in the media space is this: The price of WTI crude bottomed at $11.26. ELEVEN DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Stock market plunged faster than ever before

And consumer spending dropped significantly for the first time ever...

The economy was about to completely fucking implode. The only reason it didn't was because the federal reserve absolutely flooded the market with cash and the federal government forbore on shutting down the economy. And the media/social media apparatus played its linchpin role - socializing this clusterfuck we are currently in - super well.

This is the stuff that radicalized me so I know all the ins and outs culturally, economically and paid super close attention to the astroturfing campaign that swept social media wrt lockdowns and no new normal. Social media is pretty much 100% compromised. I also live in a red state but near a blue college town and so I was able to watch the evolution of how people responded to covid and lockdowns in a super interesting arena imo.

The entire media ecosystems was bent on completely distorting the reality of covid as soon as it was discovered to be a serious illness that would spread rapidly and severely hamper the economy. These firms rely on psychologists who intentionally instill, in the average viewer, reader, the biases which we try to try to avoid on an individual basis.

First and foremost for covid was to instill hyperbolic discounting - where public-health education would highlight that the risks of covid could be with you for life, the media/gov instead highlighted the short term downsides of being cautious while actively downplaying the long term problems.

Second is spreading their approach by instilling a false consensus - they use their ownership of the information battlespace (bots and shills online) to create an illusion of concensus. The biggest example of this was the Facebook event in New Zealand where 5,000 people signed up to march against lockdowns and a dozen or so showed up, and it was later discovered that almost all the facebook accounts were bots. (also check out the dead internet theory).

Third is to use easy to remember soundbites (i.e. sloganization) to trigger the availability heuristic . So the phrase "no new normal" or "mild covid" (which ended up being the most deadly wave yet) are examples of these things. They stick in your mind and so you begin to believe that if you remembered them they must be important.

Fourth, closely tied to the thirds is the Illusory truth effect. This is the notion that if you repeat something over and over you get people to believe it is true even if their is no evidence to support what you are saying. Again this is tied to the sloganization of things like mild covid, no new normal, etc etc. This is the bread and butter of propaganda.

Fifth -optimism bias - "that won't happen to me" . Self-explanatory as well imo.

The Most important dynamic which they lean so heavily upon is their monopoly on how the issue is framed. They consistently framed the issue as either "Economy vs snow-flake taking care of people" When the truth is the decision was/is "economy and/or taking care of people and/or profits choose 2". Many people think they are being sensible by supporting the absolutely eugenicist/fascist sacrificing of the vulnerable populations in order to "prevent the economy from falling apart" when the reality is that we could have done both if the government had stepped up and the corporations had eaten a big loss sandwich. But the average person has no materialist analysis and cannot see that for themselves.

The reason I feel it is worth enumerating all of the heuristics here is that generally speaking when we read about these things it is with the idea that we can do x or y to avoid falling into that trap. The truth is that the science of psychology is monetized not by risk management departments of companies but by marketing departments of companies. This field of study is funded under the pretense that they use the information to avoid mistakes but the real reason the capitalists fund this research is to learn how best to lead the proletariat into making mistakes... like not taking covid seriously while the ruling class is staying safe on their islands and penthouses.