by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Are these claims even remotely plausible for a highly contagious virus that spreads easily between humans while carriers show no symptoms?
It’s clear that the narrative about the coronavirus is being carefully managed globally to minimize the impact on global sentiment and markets. Authorities are well aware of the global economy’s extreme fragility, and so Job One for authorities everywhere is to scrub the news flow of anything that doesn’t support the implicit official narrative:
1. The coronavirus is only an issue in China; it’s contained outside China.
2. The coronavirus will soon be contained in China, and global business will quickly return to normal.
In pushing this narrative, authorities around the world share the same goal: limit the damage to consumer confidence and markets, as the legitimacy of every regime from Beijing to Washington D.C. to Nairobi is based on maintaining these economic fictions: