Week of 04/13/2020

COVID Pandemic Invites Supervillain Designs
– by David Matthews 2

Imagine your area faced a major disaster.  Say, for instance, a Category 5 hurricane that shows no signs of weakening and would only get stronger and stronger as it approaches your location.  Common sense would tell you to evacuate as soon as you could, or, at the very least, hunker down as much as possible and prepare for the devastation that would ensue.

Now let’s suppose that, instead of telling people to evacuate, your political, social, religious, and business leaders were telling you to just go about your lives like the storm never existed.  It’s a hoax, some of them would say.  They might say that the threatened damage is overblown, the potential loss of life is over-exaggerated, “fake news”, and it would really be important that people get back to work and back to shopping as soon as possible.

Wouldn’t you think those leaders were loony?  Off their rockers?  Would you even listen to what they would say?  Or would you be evacuating and hoping that fate deals those leaders some payback when the storm hit?

When it comes to the COVID-19 global pandemic, we are having to deal with plenty of people with just that kind of attitude.  While the prevailing mindset is to shelter-in-place and practice social distancing and wearing masks and washing hands, there are certain people – and you can guess the worst of the bunch – that seem to operate out of pure ignorance and gross incompetence.  They claim that the pandemic is “overblown”, the recommended measures are “draconian”, and that the greater emphasis needs to be on restarting the economy as soon as possible regardless of the spread of the disease.  Some people have even out-and-out said that they *want* everyone to get coronavirus!

Crazy, isn’t it?

For most people, yes. 

But as a writer and a comic book creator, I can see the method in the madness.  I can see it, because I spend my time getting into the mindset of villains and supervillains as part of my stories.  Like “The Shadow”, I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  (Insert ominous laugh here.)

Before we get started, let me say that this is purely speculative.  It’s not based on any kind of empirical evidence or hidden knowledge of these individuals.  It’s just a theory that happens to fit the information.

Why would someone in their right mind want everyone – or at least just the general populace – to become infected with coronavirus?  Why would they encourage people to ignore the warnings or dismiss the threat?  Why dismiss and undermine the shortage of much-needed protective gear or ventilators or hospital beds or even testing?

You would if you really want a lot of people to get sick and die.

Understand that a sociopath or a psychopath – and that includes those with narcissistic personality disorders – have no sense of empathy for others.  They don’t know or care how other people feel, even during times of crisis.  Their only concerns are themselves and to their own matters.  A sociopathic businessman does not care one bit about how many people die because of an accident at the workplace; he only cares about how it will affect the stock price.  A sociopathic politician doesn’t care about how many lives are lost in a natural disaster or how much damage it will incur; he only cares about how it will affect his re-election chances.

So already we know that these people are not “normal” people like you or I.  They don’t regard other people like we do.  They don’t think the same way we do.  They regard other people as things.  Numbers on a spreadsheet.  Words on some ledger.  That makes it easy for them to conclude that sometimes people need to die for some greater purpose.

When it comes to a global pandemic, we see in these sociopaths and psychopaths the opportunity to – as Charles Dickens once wrote – “decrease the surplus population”.

Think for a minute about what we knew when the pandemic started about who was being affected the worst: the elderly, those with diminished or compromised immune systems, and African-Americans.  Favorite targets of politicians of certain political leanings.

If these groups were to die in large numbers, especially if they were to die quickly through a pandemic, well, then, they wouldn’t need government assistance afterward.  Those are less recipients of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and other welfare programs.  They won’t need unemployment assistance.  They won’t need medical assistance.  Fewer beds in nursing homes.  Fewer need for doctors and nurses and for health insurance payments.  No need for any of that because they would be dead, and everyone else that survives would be stronger.

With this in mind, you can see why someone would claim that the threat is “a hoax”, or to undermine the scope of the threat.  Why they would be reluctant to push for social distancing and to tell people to shelter-in-place.  Why they would peddle some quick “solutions” that may or may not work.  Why they would focus more on businesses recovering than on people surviving.  Why they would tell people to get out in large numbers for celebrations in blatant defiance of health guidelines.  It’s not because they are ignorant or incompetent.  It is because they really want large numbers of people to get sick and to die.  And to do so quickly to decrease that “surplus population”.

Now if you think that idea is disturbing; if you would be outraged to know that certain people in social, political, or religious authority would advocate that kind of notion for that precise end, then there is nothing wrong with you.  It means you are ethical and moral.  That just means that you are like the rest of us.

Let’s get brutally honest here… this is still just speculation.  A hypothetical explanation for actions and attitudes that we see in the real world right now.  It would be far easier for us to believe that the people who are doing these things are doing so from a position of ignorance and sheer incompetence in a quest to make a buck or to score some political points.  Because the alternative would require us to examine our own support of these people and whether or not they should face any kind of consequences.