Ever since Covid-19 began, something about it smelled funny. It seemed manufactured, orchestrated and controlled. Of couse, now it’s looking more and more likely that the virus itself WAS actually manufactured in a lab, a theory which at one point got you banned from Facebook because it’s racist or something.
I’m not an virologist, epidemiologist or a gynecologist. But I’m an expert of two things: Marketing and evolutionary health. Perhaps it’s this unique perspective that makes it so hard for me to believe the official narrative of events. None of this makes sense from an evolutionary health perspective BUT makes all the sense from a marketing perspective. It’s the most viral marketing campaign of all time.
Marketing has come a long way since the 1950’s. People have became media-savvy. I mean look how cute car ads from the 1950’s look to us now:
But as people have became more media-savvy, marketers have become more people-savvy. How do you create a movement? You start with a teaser. You build up hype. You recruit people to spread the word for you. You launch big. You get people hooked. You recruit brand ambassadors. You create a community. Eventually you settle to a quarterly product update cycle with big beats breaking the baseline.
The teaser
In January 2020, the world started seeing weird photos and news reports coming from China. People dropping dead on the streets. Whole cities quarantined. People being welded shut inside their apartments. A leak happened. We got a peek of something that we never normally see. After all, China is very secretive about its internal affairs.
The “tease first, deny later” tactic is of course very much business as usual. You could find something similar about any product launch. Here’s a recent example with the new Spiderman movie.
The hype builds
Now pretty soon it became clear that this thing is spreading everywhere. I mean, it’s a virus. That’s what they do. People around the world started getting a bit nervous, but because we’re generally not crazy, we didn’t stay home or start wearing masks everywhere.
Then the Flatten The Curve meme appeared.
Suddenly everyone knew what we had to do. Stay home for two weeks. Flatten the curve. Then we can go back to normal. Don’t be a selfish asshole. You can stay home for two weeks. Unless of course you’re a food delivery guy in which case we need YOU to bring ME food. But then stay home. The only piece of practical know-how that has spread this far and wide in the history of mankind is that you have to blow into a NES game cassette before you plug it in.
The launch event
Italy is a good place to launch. It’s got history. It’s got traditions. Colosseum, gladiators & pizza. And launch it did. Soon the whole word was inundated by pictures from Italian covid wards, of people singing to the first responders from their windows, of people young and old in ventilators. Everyone was watching. And 136 000 people have since died with Covid in Italy.
Or have they? Italian newspaper Il Tempo reports that the Institute has revised downward the number of people who have died from COVID rather than with COVID from 130,000 to under 4,000. A reduction of mere 97%. Whoops.
“According to the Institute, 65.8% of Italians who died after being infected with Covid were ill with arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), 23.5% had dementia, 29.3% had diabetes, and 24.8% atrial fibrillation. Add to that, 17.4% had lung problems, 16.3% had had cancer in the last five years and 15.7% suffered from previous heart failures.”
Facts that hurt
We know this in December 2021. We didn’t know it in the March of 2020. So of course everyone freaked out. They stayed inside. They ate the delivery food. They were happy to be alive. Until they became angry.
Getting people hooked
Now of course staying inside for two weeks wasn’t enough. Two weeks came and went but the virus was still a virus, and viruses like honeybadgers don’t care. It was the time roll out the next phase: Politicization. It was because of Trump that Covid hit. Now, because US politics run the whole world news cycle, this became the dominant narrative everywhere. The Trump of Finland is Perussuomalaiset, The Trump of France is Marine Le Penn, The Trump of Great Britain is anyone who supported Brexit and so on. Those right wing bastards. If only they had stayed home. Of course the reason they did’t stay home was because the mainly are the people who keep society running, the water pumping, the electricity flowing and bake the bread for your avocado toasts.
With sufficient political passion now stoked, it was time to start recruiting brand ambassadors. And boom, like that, the social media was full of blue-check-marked people explaining how we’re gonna get through this. Wash your hands, stay home and whatever you do, DON’T FOR THE LOVE OF GOD wear a mask.
This first phase of anti-masking lasted maybe a month and then it was time for the next step: MASK-O-MANIA! Everyone needs to wear a mask. Babies, cats, dogs and your Facebook profile picture.
Free swag
The handy thing about masks is that they’re free brand exposure. Everyone’s wearing your logo, if you’re the coronavirus. The mask became the fidget spinner of 2020.
Masks may or may not have played a small role in the spread of Covid-19 but they played a massive role in dividing people into good little soldiers and bad selfish rebels. Masked face good, normal face bad.
The VIP program
With the public succesfully divided in half, it was time to dive deeper. The mask-wearing fanboys don’t just want to win. They want to score the most points. At first, the way to achieve high score was to wear more than one mask. Nice guys wear two masks but triple-maskers get to go home and fuck the prom queen.
And then, like a godsend, by the time the public was getting maybe a bit bored with triplemasking, the vaccines arrived. By the way, definitely not intentionally after the US presidential election, no way, no sir. And it was great, now you could even add a sticker to your masked FB profile picture.
And not only that, pretty soon we got the news we really wanted to hear: You can get more than one! In fact, you can even mix and match the different vaccines together! What could be greater? Getting the J&J first, then Pfizer and finishing off with Moderna before your 4th round is like the new 360 no-scope headshot. You basically become an immortal god of modern science and health. And of course, you get to shame the unvaccinated harder with every Covid-loyalty jab you get.
Business as usual
Phew, those were some fun times back in 2020 and early 2021. Unfortunately nothing lasts forever, even global pandemics. The joys of tearing the fabric of society apart for a virus with 99,7% survival rate are now fading. But it’s not all bad, we’re finally entering The New Normal they always told us would arrive. Apparently, it involves getting vaccinated every 3 months, which definitely is just a coincidence and not intentional to boost profits on a quarterly basis. What? You’re saying that a quarter is 3 months? Well I just said it’s a coincidence so shut up already. Just get your loyalty booster and be done with it.
Of course you need to spice up your messaging every now and again to keep people onboard. So you could for example roll out product updates with Greek alphabet names maybe once or twice a year. Just make sure to skip Xi not to anger you-know-who, amirite LOL?
So what the fuck are you saying?
Marketing, PR and propaganda are kissing cousins. Ask yourself: If this was the marketing campaign, what is the product they’re selling you?
Till next time, my fellow consumers.
Vaarallisia ideoita 