COVID-‘19 is like AIDS-‘89

Not really, but forgive the click-baity subject and follow me for just a second. I had this thought over a month ago, but really had an epiphany of its sad truth while listening to Jonás Knox absolutely pants Rob Parker Monday evening on Parker’s radio show (Chris Broussard was out) and Parker not even realizing it.

I was born in the late 70s, so was 8/9/10ish when the AIDS hysteria really hit America. The details were pretty taboo to discuss with kids my age, but I knew 2 things: 1) you could get it having sex, and 2) gay men were much more likely to get it. It seems silly in retrospect, but my young mind concluded that the mere act of having gay sex created AIDS. Not just transmitted it, but literally made it magically appear.

This is how a lot of people—media specifically—are talking about COVID as it relates to college football. They talk as if the very act of playing college football is capable of creating COVID where there once was none and having it spontaneously manifest inside the bodies of college football players. Very well educated (and I assume sufficiently intelligent) adults are now applying the same logic to the transmission of COVID as my 9-year-old self did with AIDS. It’s so fricking bizarre.

There’s no way they can actually believe the virus acts this way, but they seem unable to carry their reasoning out just 1 step beyond “BUT THINK ABOUT PLAYERS’ SAFETY. WE CAN’T LET THEM PLAY IN CONDITIONS LIKE THIS!!

Back to Rob Parker getting unknowingly destroyed by Jonás Knox. They are on completely opposite sides and it may be worth seeking out the 1st hour of that Monday show for laughs. Jonás kept saying “if everybody has tested negative, what is the risk?” Parker had no answer except to scream louder.

No matter where the conversation went or who called (a father of a Kentucky player called and said he wants his son to have the opportunity to play), it always came around to “if no players in the game tested positive, how is anybody at risk?” And Parker had no answer. He was asked a hypothetical “so, if you were invited to an event, and you knew everyone there had tested negative, would you still not go?” He finally realized he needed to quit talking.

But these are the people that are shaping the stories that the general public is consuming. There is no objective truth, only subjected truth filtered through the lens of their bias. And there’s a long line of sheep giddily waiting to swallow it