[samcday]

Honestly I don’t really understand the end game of disinformation campaigns like this.

It’s one thing to spread propaganda in order to influence elections and get a crooked bureaucrat into power that can enrich some corporate buddies. But it’s another to deceive people about a global health crisis. If you’re successful, people go outside and trigger a second wave of infections - lots of people die and we’re back to square 1. Economy will still be fucked.

What am I missing here?

[mindslight]

If 1-2% of people die quickly, the economy will not be fucked. That's a politicized untruth put out to counter other politicized untruths.

The people protesting and doing other stupid things are actually helping those of us that are isolating. The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. This obviously depends on whether an individual can get reinfected, but I haven't seen anything conclusive one way or another and it feels like this has also been misleadingly politicized.

Obviously a deluge of cases is absolutely terrible for the healthcare workers, as well as other essential employees that are exposed to the mob-herd (eg grocery store workers) and likely won't receive adequate healthcare. So I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing.

[etrabroline]

Why do you care more about "the economy" than the lives of 2% ~= 6 million people? The Fed could take back it's massive Wall Street bailout and give it to workers. Rich people would hoot and holler but no one would starve, and the public would be much less anxious to lift the quarantine.

>herd immunity

There is no natural herd immunity for the flu or common cold. It's totally possible that after a few months people who survive become reinfected, which would massively increase the death rate if you already have lung damage when you get it again.

[orisho]

Don't hurry to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity

[perl4ever]

If you think it is a Russian campaign, as people have previously asserted, you might get some perspective by looking at what seems to be happening in Russia right now. There is a Wikipedia page on covid in Russia.

The Russian statistics look fishy to me, but not in the same way as the Chinese ones. They have surging numbers of new cases, but a outlier very low claimed death rate. Of course, the latter might just be lagging. And there are supposedly similar protests in Russia as in the US - what does that mean? Are they real? Is it, say, the CIA? Or some internal conflict, or genuinely grassroots?