Chicken Little

 Saw this take today that I wanted to briefly remark on:

The take itself is good (for those of you that don't use Twitter, that's what the little heart thingy is for), and refers to a current on the internet that goes back months if not years.  Of course, not everyone agreed:

The disconnect here (and elsewhere) is that the original post specifically addresses "fear-mongering" which has a very specific and purposeful definition.  Namely:

And if you spend anytime on the internet, you will see plenty of this.  For example:

And for good measure, some old fear-mongery posts from the person who took issue with claims of fear-mongering:

And this is a bigger subject for a longer post, but I would be remiss not to note that a lot of this crosses over into anti-vax sentiment, sometimes explicitly:

Normally I would not remark on this disconnect but for one thing.  Actually existing Covid is bad enough...millions dead, billions infected, a new endemic virus to manage in perpetuity, a largely indifferent ruling class facing zero repercussions for their crimes, and a society still feeling every single after-effect possible.  Indeed, it's the sort of event that should inspire a mass movement to address the shortcomings of our political economy and ensure that we're in a place to actually confront the next such challenge, whenever it happens.  But the fear-mongering doesn't just not help with this, it actively works against this.  It creates a reality so perilous, so fraught with certain doom, that fighting for change becomes inherently impossible.  It's effectively a call to inaction.  I still believe that we can use the shared suffering of the past three years as a rallying cry to demand something better, but we're never going to do that if we can't engage with reality as it actually exists.  And that means never, ever resorting to fear-mongering.